Discover the legacy of the St. Louis Argus, a newspaper that has been delivering local news and community coverage for 114 years.
The St. Louis ARGUS Newspaper: Our People, Our News, Our History Part 1
Newspapers have come and gone in St. Louis. Some started with money, powerful influences to help pave a course of direction in its early stages. It’s 2024 and more have passed into oblivion. The St. Louis ARGUS Newspaper, founded by 2 brothers without means, but with an idea to keep alive and speak for the black voice. Developed, Operated and Owned by a family who held positions in every aspect of the business in its own office, now reaches 112 years old with a constituency few other newspapers in this country can claim. It had stamina. It’s still it’s truth, it stills the voice of the sometimes unheard. But to be 112 years old and able to boast like no other, to only be Owned and Operated by 2 St. Louis Families even today. Now that’s what black history looks like…
The St Louis ARGUS from its beginning, was always for the town, for the city, for its black community. It has consistently stood for good morals and still stands today. It has surpassed the milestone of over a hundred years old because it deserves to be. It has a history which cannot be separated from the history of St. Louis.
Money and brains alone cannot make an enduring newspaper. Many contributed to the local St. Louis ARGUS Newspaper history of its print about St. Louis. The different publications, which numbered in the hundreds, showed a colorful developmental process throughout the century.
The ARGUS is the property, the voice, the vision of St. Louis citizens, and with great proportions of the black community whose men, women, young adults, and children interests are inseparably connected with the progress and advancement of this city. And whose lives are part and a parcel of the commercial and social life of this locality. For that reason, this publication reflects St. Louis’s very often and still today unheard voices in every paragraph, and its time, talent and influence are used to promote the welfare and prosperity on each and every page of, The St. Louis ARGUS Newspaper & it’s Publishing Companies.
The St. Louis ARGUS is evidence that a newspaper is more than a commercial proposition. Journalism is not to advocate one man’s purposes, not to serve one corporation’s ends, not to be one party’s, eyes or trumpet. The St. Louis ARGUS has thrived one hundred twelve-years, because it existed for the good of a community, a race of people wanting, needing to be heard, from a State that often-played politics, of a nation at a time in history that intentionally left their story untold. On some occasions, it may have been not always right, or lacked other details not privy to certain colors of race. To err is as journalistic as it is to be human. But the motive was always good, the idea and message were kept in clear view, the effort was well-meant, and the deepest expression of mankind was sincere.
Often thoughts come to mind of “Old Newspaper Boys” the ARGUS was seen with the morning fare read by cabbies, coffee shop patrons, streetcar and bus conductors, lawyers, doctors, labor leaders, sports managers, coaches, industrialists, civic leaders, desk sergeants, philosophers, poets, bartenders, beauticians, and barbers, even amongst “The Help”. In other words this paper was well read. With the exception of a comparatively few days in its long, long, history, the newspaper has been delivered to newsstands and of late, the 21st century into the homes, offices, cell phones and internet subscribers. As the St. Louis ARGUS celebrates 112 years as a major source of news, views and issues in the St. Louis metropolitan and outlying areas here’s a special tribute to a few of those legendary trailblazer’s ahead of their time, The lions story can never be told, when the hunter is the only one standing one standing to tell the story…some didn’t get to tell their story but The St. Louis ARGUS is that Lion…
Ben Thomas –
Was the founder, editor and do-everything guy at the St. Louis Evening Whirl. He left his job as entertainment editor at The St. Louis Argus in 1937 to start his own weekly entertainment paper for the Black community, the Night Whirl. As promotion for that paper, he initiated the Colored Mayors’ Association, hosted beauty pageants and interviewed visiting celebrities. When he broke a local crime story that the town’s other papers wouldn’t print, he sold over 50,000 copies and immediately changed the name to The Evening Whirl, concentrating on creatively written, sensational crime stories. If it bleeds, it leads.
Nathan Young, Jr. –
Enduring a media legacy was the founding of The St. Louis American in 1928. As a practicing attorney, and later a judge, Young spent much of his time researching facts. When not in court, he would delve into court records, newspaper files and history books, talking with anyone he could meet about their memories of life in early St. Louis. He turned his findings into books, poetry, and music. Mr. Young wrote for the St. Louis American for more than 40 years. The often-violent racial unrest that afflicted many Northern cities in the 1920s and 1930s made newspapers like St. Louis American, published by and for the black community, a necessary part of people’s lives.
Part 2 Continued Next Edition
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