The Founding: The Twenties

The Louisiana Weekly is among the oldest newspapers that African Americans publish in the United States. The weekly paper published in New Orleans for 80 years, as of 2005, has chronicled the ups and downs of black people, particularly before the mid-1960s when mainstream newspapers began the slow climb toward progressive reporting of the affairs of blacks.

Constant Charles Dejoie, Sr., president of the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company in New Orleans, invested approximately $2,000 and founded The Louisiana Weekly, the first issue of which was dated September 19, 1925. Dejoie, then age 44 and without journalism training, took the title of publisher but played no major editorial role at the paper.

O.C.W. Taylor, then a former teacher in public schools and a teacher training institution in New Orleans, encouraged Dejoie to finance the founding of the Weekly. At the time...