Gourgey, H. (2001). Poetics of memory and marginality: Images of the Native American in African American Newspapers, 1870-1900 and 1970-1990. In T. Vogel (Eds.). The Black Press: New Literary and Historical Essays (pp. 104-120)

Hannah Gourgey discusses the portrayal of Native Americans in the black press. At first, she notes that the image that the black press painted of Native Americans was made up of stereotypes derived from mainstream language. Instead of uniting through their common experiences of oppression, they separated themselves from Native Americans through the use of these stereotypes that placed them on the lowest level of society.

Gourgey offers some background on what factored into the image of Native Americans in the black press, starting with Reconstruction, during which there was a fight for land and the Native Americans were perceived as a competitor for it.

She briefly discusses eugenics, which basically ranked races, placing African Americans and Native Americans at the bottom. Efforts to place themselves above Native Americans appeared in the form of analogies that compared the Native American to plants and animals rather than fellow humans. The act of making them seem uncivilized was also an attempt to shake off notions of the African American as a primitive race.

The shift in the portrayal of Native Americans by the black press came during the 1960s when social movements were flourishing. By abandoning mainstream language to describe them, the black press challenged authority and rewrote historical narrative. Gourgey refers to this as memory, an act of remembrance, to “unforget” the past and connect through their common experience as oppressed people. Through these new strategies, there was a creation of solidarity among marginalized communities.

Gourgey also discusses the columns written in the Chicago Defender under the pseudonym Charley Cherokee. These columns, she says, focused on social injustices and discussing public figures. He is a symbol of “shared experience”, as she puts it.

Another example she offers of the depiction of Native Americans in the black press deals with the editorials that appeared in Amsterdam News, which supported the American Indian Movement during Wounded Knee occupation of 1973. The newspaper referred to them as the “first American”, rewriting historical narrative and rejecting the policy and concept of “manifest destiny”. (Reviewed by Christina Semaan)