Paper of Record

If mainstream media coverage in 1963 had looked different, perhaps Danville’s civil rights movement would have remained in the public consciousness in the years afterward, one journalism professor said.

They both came of age in Danville in the 1960s. His father was a white publisher who took a stand on civil rights; her father was one of the city’s first Black reporters.

The Commercial Appeal quoted local and national civil rights leaders. It also covered goings-on in Danville’s Black neighborhoods.

The “paper of record” could make — or bury — history. But what happens when there’s another paper in town?