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The
Mary Junck Research Colloquium Series Spring 2008 |
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School of Journalism
and Mass Communication |
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Dr. Patrick Washburn |
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Professor |
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Feb. 21 |
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George Padmore of the
Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender: A Decidedly Different World War
II Correspondent |
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George
Padmore was one of twenty-seven war correspondents
for black newspapers in World War II and one of only two who served the
entire time that the U.S. was in the war. Writing almost 600 bylined articles
for both the Pittsburgh Courier and
the Chicago Defender, the two
largest and most influential black papers in the country, he was not a
typical war correspondent. He spent the entire war in London, never going to
the front lines to cover a battle or flying on a bombing run or being on a
naval raid. As expected, he covered black American soldiers in England and
played up the contributions that the “Dixie boys” were making to the Allied
war effort. But the heavy majority of his coverage did not deal with
Americans. Instead, he wrote extensively about colonial imperialism,
particularly as it was practiced by Great Britain, and how blacks around the
world were contributing to winning the war and what their fates might be
following it. These stories were clearly important to U.S. blacks, who viewed
the war as a chance for blacks to make great gains not only in America but
worldwide. The presence of the large volume of such stories by Padmore is significant, and breaks new ground, because
historians have ignored the fact that black papers during the war were
covering blacks in other countries rather than just in the U.S. |
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If you would like additional details/information Sriram "Sri" Kalyanaraman |
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