The Press: Negro Editors’ Line-Up

Some Democratic campaigners last week tried to make out that Wendell Willkie was anti-Negro because his ancestors were German, and some Negroes charged that the Negro press was unfairly biased against Willkie. Actually the Negro press, which in 1936 was overwhelmingly for Roosevelt, who gave Negroes relief, this year is heavily for Willkie. Of 55 most influential Negro newspapers surveyed by TIME, 27 were for Willkie, 11 for Roosevelt, 17 had not declared. Line-up of top-flight Negro papers:

> Robert Lee Vann’s potent Pittsburgh Courier (circulation: 126,962), for Roosevelt in 1936, this year is for Willkie.

> Carl Murphy’s Baltimore Afro-American is for Willkie too. The Afro-American, really four papers, publishes in Baltimore (54,330), Washington (18,596), Philadelphia (17,159), Richmond, Va. (5,467), is read by Negroes throughout the East.

> The Chicago Defender (82,059),a stanch Republican organ for 35 years until Editor Robert Sengstacke Abbott died last February, declared for Roosevelt.

> Harlem’s Amsterdam News (35,841) also is for Roosevelt, like its Editor Clilan Bethany Powell, who is the Democratic Party’s Negro publicity director.

> Carter Wesley, A.B. (Fisk), LL.D. (Northwestern), onetime first lieutenant in the A. E. F., publisher of seven Texas papers (the Houston, Corpus Christi, Galveston, Austin, Longview, Lovelady Informer, the Dallas Express), backed Roosevelt in 1932, 1936, this year backs Willkie. Says Publisher Wesley: “We are supporting Willkie not because we think that he can do more for the Negro race, but because Negroes will share in the betterment of business if Willkie is elected.”