State Overview: When Indian Territory was opened to settlers, an estimated 3,000 blacks joined the 1889 rush to settle the Oklahoma Territory. Many southern newspapers of the 1880s urged blacks to move west to escape Jim Crow oppression, often specifically mentioning Oklahoma. A number of exclusively black towns sprang up in Oklahoma and the State’s population centers, such as Oklahoma City and Tulsa, also had considerable black populations. Thus, Oklahoma has an especially rich history of black newspapers.

The first black publication, a monthly called the Oklahoma Guide, appeared in 1889 in Oklahoma City but quickly vanished. One of the black cities, Langston City, soon had its own newspaper to promote the community; the Langston Herald appeared in 1891 and lasted until 1902. Newspapers also appeared in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Guthrie, Clearview, and the black towns of Lincoln and Boley. Muskogee, alone, was home to 20 black newspapers between 1890 and 1930.

Like the black press in Kansas, Oklahoma’s played a promotional role, trying to attract blacks to the West. However, Oklahoma’s newspapers tended to be more politically independent, relying less on subsidies from the Republican Party and deriving their finances from the subscribers. Oklahoma’s black press also supplied information on the dates and rules for the land runs.

As the black population of Oklahoma shifted from the towns to the cities, the rural black newspapers disappeared by the 1930s. Despite early promises of good land and a better life in the West, Oklahoma proved to be no paradise. And, Oklahoma’s black press included some newspapers that attacked the discrimination and racial violence brewing from white distrust of Oklahoma’s growing black population.

Before the Black Dispatch, only six African-American newspapers had used black in their titles, and none of them lasted very long. Dunjee chose the title because whites used the phrase “black dispatch” as a slang term for gossip or untruths, and he felt that phrases like this insulted the integrity of the African American. So, by using it as the title of a newspaper and adhering to high standards of journalism, Dunjee wanted to attack racist attitudes and instill pride in black heritage.

Famous for his fiery editorials, Dunjee used the Black Dispatchto train black journalists, to attack discrimination, and to encourage the black community to fight for civil rights. Angered by the meek acceptance of Jim Crow many African Americans displayed, Dunjee wrote editorials criticizing blacks who didn’t vote or participate in politics. In an especially harsh 1920 editorial titled “Senseless Blacks,” he wrote: “The most disgusting and senseless Negro that we know is the fellow who stands around and says, ‘Oh I never vote; I’m not registered’ and who always slurs and tells you that the Negro who is active in politics in the community is selling you out and should not be trusted.”

When the Oklahoma Federation for Constitutional Rights began investigating discrimination in the State in 1941, Governor Leon Phillips called the organization “the height of folly” and claimed, “no one is denied constitutional rights in Oklahoma.” Dunjee responded with one of his lengthy trademark editorials, citing court cases and the activities of the NAACP:

On every train and bus in Oklahoma, this writer and all Negroes in Oklahoma are denied civil rights. Can the Governor observe denial of Negroes to Pullman and chaircar accommodations on railroads, and then like Pontius Pilate, wash his hands, saying ‘No one is denied constitutional rights in Oklahoma?’

The Black Dispatchsupported the Great Northern Drive of 1915, offering many columns of advice to southern blacks traveling north and encountering northern ways for the first time. During World War I (WW I), Dunjee supported the war and demanded recognition of black soldiers, criticizing Governor Robert Williams for ignoring black soldiers in an address to the Red Cross.

When racial tensions exploded in Tulsa in the summer of 1921, resulting in an estimated 300 deaths and the destruction of the black community known as Greenwood, the Black Dispatchprovided complete coverage, tried to silence rumors, and raised money for thousands of homeless black Tulsa residents. Dunjee, suspicious of the minor incident that sparked the violence, investigated the riot’s causes and editorialized that white business interests had hired agitators to rouse the white populace because they wanted Greenwood’s valuable real estate. The city’s new districting ordinances proposed such strict guidelines on the Greenwood district that black homeowners found the costs prohibitive. A Black Dispatchfront-page story stated, “this latest fire limit ordinance shows plainly that Tulsa coveted also the very land upon which black men dwelt.”

The Federal government investigated the Black Dispatch for disloyalty during World War II (WW II), and the FBI reported that the paper used known Communist phrases like “civil liberties,” “inalienable rights,” and “freedom of the speech and of the press.” The Black Dispatchsurvived this wartime scrutiny, but financial problems forced Dunjee to sell the paper to his nephew John Dungee in 1955. It remained a family-run newspaper until it folded in 1982.