BOSTON: America’s first newspaper dedicated to ending slavery is being resurrected and reimagined more than two centuries later as the nation continues to grapple with its legacy of racism.

The revived version of The Emancipator is a joint effort by Boston University’s Centre for Antiracist Research and The Boston Globes Opinion team that’s expected to launch in the coming months.

Deborah Douglas and Amber Payne, co-editors-in-chief of the new online publication, say it will feature written and video opinion pieces, multimedia series, virtual talks and other content by respected scholars and seasoned journalists. The goal, they say, is to reframe the national conversation around racial injustice.

“I like to say its anti-racism, every day, on purpose,” said Douglas, who joined the project after working as a journalism professor at DePauw University in Indiana. “We are targeting anyone who wants to be a part of the solution to creating an anti-racist society because we think that leads us to our true north, which is democracy.”

The original Emancipator was founded in 1820 in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by iron manufacturer Elihu Embree, with the stated purpose to advocate the abolition of slavery and to be a repository of tracts on that interesting and important subject, according to a digital collection of the monthly newsletter at the University of Tennessee library.

Before Embree’s untimely death from a fever ended its brief run later that year, The Emancipator reached a circulation of more than 2,000, with copies distributed throughout the South and in northern cities like Boston and Philadelphia that were centres of the abolition movement.

Douglas and Payne say drawing on the paper’s legacy is appropriate now because it was likely difficult for Americans to envision a country without slavery back then, just as many people today likely can’t imagine a nation without racism. The new Emancipator was announced last March, nearly a year after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020 sparked social justice movements worldwide.

“Those abolitionists were considered radical and extreme,” Douglas said. “But that’s part of our job as journalists providing those tools, those perspectives that can help them imagine a different world.”

Other projects have also recently come online taking the mantle of abolitionist newspapers, including The North Star, a media site launched in 2019 by civil rights activist Shaun King and journalist Benjamin Dixon that’s billed as a revival of Frederick Douglass’ influential anti-slavery newspaper.

Douglas said The Emancipator, which is free to the public and primarily funded through philanthropic donations, will stand out because of its focus on incisive commentary and rigorous academic work. The publications staff, once it’s ramped up, will largely eschew the typical quick turnaround, breaking news coverage, she said.

“This is really deep reporting, deep research and deep analysis that’s scholarly driven but written at a level that everyone can understand,” Douglas said. “Everybody is invited to this conversation. We want it to be accessible, digestible and, hopefully, actionable.”

“The publication also hopes to serve as a bulwark against racist misinformation, with truth-telling explanatory videos and articles,” she added. “It’ll take a critical look at popular culture, film, music and television and, as the pandemic eases, look to host live events around Boston.”

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2022