Seeking a Voice

by Sachsman, David B.

• ISBN13: 9781557535085
• ISBN10: 1557535086
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-05-15
• Publisher: Purdue Univ Pr

Summary

This volume chronicles the media's role in reshaping American life during the tumultuous nineteenth century by focusing specifically on the presentation of race and gender in the newspapers and magazines of the time. The work is divided into four parts: Part I, "Race Reporting," details the various ways in which America's racial minorities were portrayed; Part II, "Fires of Discontent," looks at the moral and religious opposition to slavery by the abolitionist movement and demonstrates how that opposition was echoed by African Americans themselves; Part III, "The Cult of True Womanhood," examines the often disparate ways in which American women were portrayed in the national media as they assumed a greater role in public and private life; and Part IV, "Transcending the Boundaries," traces the lives of pioneering women journalists who sought to alter and expand their gender's participation in American life, showing how the changing role of women led to various journalistic attempts to depict and define women through sensationalistic news coverage of female crime stories.

Author Biography

David B. Sachsman holds the George R. West, Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. Sachsman is an editor of The Civil War and the Press (2000) and director of the annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression, which he and Kit Rushing founded in 1993. He also is known for his books and articles on environmental communication. S. Kittrell Rushing is the Frank McDonald Professor of Communication and the head of the Communication Department at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. His current research interests include newspapers of the antebellum and Civil War eras. He edited and wrote the introduction to A Family Secret (2005), the first novel of journalist and educator Eliza Frances "Fanny" Andrews. Roy Morris Jr. is the editor of Military Heritage magazine and the author of four well-received books on the Civil War and post-Civil War eras: Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (2003); The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War (2000); Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company (1996); and Sheridan: The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan (1992). He is currently working on a new book for Smithsonian/HarperCollins on the presidential election of 1860, as well as serving as a special projects editor for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Race Reporting
Mother, Murderess, or Martyr?: Press Coverage of the Margaret Garner Story	p. 13
Racial and Ethnic Imagery in 19th Century Political Cartoons	p. 27
Heretical or Conventional: Native Americans and African Americans in the Journalism of Jane Grey Swisshelm	p. 35
Picturing American Indians: Newspaper Pictures and Native Americans in the 1860s and 1870s	p. 45
Last Stand of the Partisan Press: Little Bighorn Coverage in Kansas Newspapers	p. 57
Assignment Liberia: "The boldest adventure in the history of Southern journalism"	p. 67
Birth of a Besieged Nation: Discourse of Victimhood in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation	p. 77
The Fires of Discontent
Fires of Discontent: Religious Contradictions in the Black Press, 1830-1860	p. 87
Like Father, Like Son: The Antislavery Legacy of William Hamilton	p. 97
Broken Shackles: How Frederick Douglass Used the Freedom of the Press, Speech, and Religion in Behalf of the African American Slave, 1847-1863	p. 107
Ebony Triangle: The Black Newspaper Network in Kansas, 1878-1900	p. 119
Illustrated African American Journalism: Political Cartooning in the Indianapolis Freeman	p. 131
Frederick Jackson Turner Revisited: The Frontier Character of the 19th Century Black Press	p. 141
Ida B. Wells, Crusader Against the Lynch Law	p. 151
The Cult of True Womanhood
The First Lady and the Media: Newspaper Coverage of Dolley Madison	p. 163
A Wonderful Duty: A Study of Motherhood in Godey's Magazine	p. 171
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the Cult of True Womanhood	p. 179
Reflections of the Civil War in Godey's and Peterson's Magazines	p. 189
The Darlings Come Out to See the Volunteers: Depictions of Women in Harper's Weekly During the Civil War	p. 205
For Feminine Readers: Images of Women in the Newspapers of the Gilded Age	p. 215
Contesting Gender Through Journalism: Revising Woman's Identity in The Lily	p. 227
Transcending the Boundaries
Transcending the Boundaries: Grace Greenwood's Washington	p. 241
Julia Amanda Sargent Wood as Editor of the New Era	p. 249
"L" Was a Woman: Lois B. Adams, Special Correspondent to the Detroit Advertiser and Tribune	p. 257
Eliza Frances Andrews (Elzey Hay), Reporter	p. 267
From Yellow Journalism to Yellowed Clippings: The Notorious Florence Maybrick	p. 277
This Wicked World: Sex, Crime, and Sports in the National Police Gazette	p. 287
The Liberty to Argue Freely: 19th Century Obscenity Prosecutions	p. 301
Ida Craddock, Free Speech Martyr	p. 317
Index	p. 327
About the Editors	p. 339
Contributors	p. 343
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