Teaneck Library Presents 'Black National News Service'

In celebration of Black History Month, Lawrence Hogan, Ph.D., professor of history at Union County College will present a slide-lecture on the “Black National News Service – The Associated Negro Press: The Best Kept Secret of American Journalism History” at the Teaneck Public Library on Friday, February 21 at 10:30 A.M. as part of the Isabelle and Sol Hermalyn lecture series. The program is funded by the Horizons Speakers Bureau of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Tuskegee Institute graduate Claude Barnett established the Associated Negro Press in 1919 in Chicago. From the year of its founding through 1964, ANP serviced what is arguably America’s greatest ethnic/group press with a national and international news coverage that was remarkable for its substance and scope. The story of ANP and Claude Barnett is one of persistence and creativity in the face of limited resources and numerous difficulties. This slide presentation tells the story of the news agency and the great newspapers it served during the golden age of America’s Black 4th Estate, an era when the ANP could be termed “the greatest single power in the Negro race.”

Hogan has taught, researched, written about, and spoken in the field of African American history for more than 40 years. His book Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball, was published in 2006 by National Geographic and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The public is welcome to attend this free program to be held in the library auditorium and to the coffee and socializing session that precedes it at 10 a.m. The library is located at 840 Teaneck Road at the corner of Cedar Lane in Teaneck.

Submitted by the Teaneck Public Library