Afro-American Newspapers Partner With Google
BALTIMORE, MD -- The AFRO-American Newspapers, one of the nation’s
oldest news organizations dedicated to covering the African American community, has created a
comprehensive collection of over a million articles that captures the African American
experience in business, civil rights, education, health, law, and sports beginning in the late 19th
century. Google partnered with the AFRO and helped to digitize the newspaper’s historic
archives and make them searchable on-line and available to anyone, anywhere in the world.
“It took us over 10 years to develop and fine tune the concept to make the AFRO’s Archive site a
reality and Google played a key role,” said publisher Jake Oliver. “The site includes original
page views of complete editions of the newspaper dating back to the early 1900s and in-depth
coverage of important stories such as the events of the arrests and national spectacle surrounding
Scottsboro Boys trials, the entertainment coverage of Black movies stars such as Dorothy
Dandridge, the Army’s use of the Tuskegee Airmen (Fighting 99th) in World War II, coverage of
the Little Rock 9 Integration in 1954 and many other events that helped to shape the black
community.”
Researchers, students, historians, teachers, and other groups can use the Archives to trace family
roots, develop talking points, craft speeches and gather information on a myriad of topics that
affected African Americans.
“The AFRO has one of the most comprehensive collections of African American history in the
world,” said Oliver, the great grandson of the newspaper’s founder John H. Murphy, Sr. “The
AFRO is an American institution and has a huge repository of information that can be used while
blogging, or when someone is on Facebook to post quotes and with Twitter. Now, with our new
mobile iPhone application, the AFRO’s Archives can be accessed instantly by students at school,
researchers and anyone who has a thirst to learn and understand.”
The AFRO-American Newspaper, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is the oldest African
American family-owned newspaper in the nation. Founded in 1892 by John H. Murphy, Sr. “the
AFRO” has grown to become the leading news provider for African Americans in Baltimore and
the greater metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. The AFRO publishes three editions-Baltimore,
Washington, DC, and Prince George’s County Maryland. In addition, it publishes the online
Afro.com and supports several community outreach programs including Mrs. Santa, Clean Green
Block and Character Education. With on-line, national and local news, the AFRO has more than
500,000 readers.