In memory of Launa Newman

BY DWIGHT HOBBES

Launa Newman, 1921-2009

Since America’s first black ewspaper, New York City’s Freedom’s Journal (1827 -1829), the purpose of the black press has been twofold: to print news of African Americans and to advocate on behalf of black communities. “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us,” the front page read, asserting autonomy.  To this day, the tradition stands, countless weeklies following that lead.

In 1934, entrepreneur Cecil Newman took up the cause, founding Minneapolis Spokes-man and St. Paul Recorder, the state’s longest lived African American press. Publisher-Editor Cecil Newman passed away in 1976, bequeathing the enterprise to his wife and business partner, Launa Newman. She effected a seamless transition, assuming the reins, sustaining the publication’s standing as Minnesota’s original voice of the black community. After serving some 30 years as chief executive officer and publisher, Launa Quincy Newman succumbed to cancer on Feb. 3, 2009.

“Without her strength, perception and single-minded dedication,” Minnesota Spokes-man-Recorder Senior Editor Jerry Freeman wrote in a memorial edition, “[MSR] would very likely not exist today.”  Owner-President Tra-cey Williams, Launa Newman’s granddaughter, stated, “She was the saving force [who] took pride as an African American woman to run a newspaper with such elegance.” Matt Little, who has contributed his commentary column “Little By Little” to Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder for the past 35 years, concurs, observing, “It was Launa Newman who [maintained MSR’s] role in documenting and preserving the integrity and the progress of Minnesota’s black community.  I happen to know, personally, that she resisted several offers to sell the paper after her husband died.  She resisted, primarily because she feared [prospective buyers] would not and could not have the paper remain the community media that Cecil, her husband, wanted it to be, and she worked so hard to see that it was.  The paper did not only survive.  It, now, has expanded.”

The mainstream press, having acquiesced to these politically correct times, runs bylines by minority reporters, arts critics and columnists.   One, then, might ask whether there’s any longer a need for the black press? Little readily notes, “There is a difference [between] reporting for an African American constituency and [writing for] the regular news.  We need both.”

Historian, scholar and community griot (West African storyteller) Mahmoud El-Kati comments, “Freedom is a constant theme, the mission of [Freedom’s Journal] has meaning and value still.”  Referring to the 200-odd weeklies and two dailies, Chicago Defender and Atlanta Daily World, as Freedom’s Journal’s offspring, he goes on to say, “The black press is an alternative voice, to put it mildly, to what’s going on in this country. Or, it’s a contra press.  And the only real oppositional press.  People need to be fully informed.”  He also cites the black press as historically being a step ahead, recalling Frederick Douglass’ 19th century publication North Star.  “The masthead said ‘Right is of no sex.  Freedom is of no color.’ For the women’s movement and the black people’s movement.  [It] was prophetic.  People are talking about this in the 21st century, the rights of women.  The black press led the way [and] has been a constant theme for justice, for freedom in a way that no other newspaper has.  And it has been on the right side of every issue [that] stood for human progress.  The black press has as an institution.” 

El-Kati notes as well that just like all white papers don’t think alike, neither do black papers.  The Twin Cities Courier, lasting from the late ’70s into the early ’80s, departed from the stereotype that all blacks necessarily stand under the Demo-cratic Party banner.  “Black people are human beings. They’re not interchangeable parts. For instance, [Twin Cities Courier founder] Mary Kyle was a staunch Republican.” 

The Courier also beat Minneapolis Star Tribune to the punch, featuring, El-Kati points out, Little Herbie, whose devilish humor picked at notables and tweaked noses long before anyone ever heard of gossip columnist Cheryl Johnson.
The house that Cecil Newman built and that Launa Newman held together is a sterling example of the adage, “Let each one teach one.” One-time Recorder and Spokesman writer Alvin McFarlane founded Insight News.  In turn, Jae Bryson, formerly at Insight News, started One Nation News, giving us, now, three black newspapers from which to glean perspectives you’ll be hard pressed to find in the mainstream media.

On top of upholding Minn-esota Spokesman-Recorder’s mission, Launa Newman personally involved herself in the community, donating time and energy to such service as, among other outreach, sitting on the board of the Minneapolis Boys Club and being one of the first black members of the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis.  Her passing leaves not a void, but, indeed, a legacy.