Black-owned paper’s ‘soldiers’ fight to give African American perspective

Tracey Williams-Dillard, the publisher of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, on how her team works tirelessly to help tell a well-rounded narrative

Just five blocks away from the crossroads of 38th and Chicago, where the world watched Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd last May, sits the oldest Black newspaper in Minnesota: the Spokesman-Recorder.

The almost 87-year-old paper was originally two Black newspapers, the Saint Paul Recorder and the Minneapolis Spokesman, launched by civil rights activist Cecil Newman. In 1976, when he died, his wife, Launa Newman, ran the paper until she was 86. In her retirement, Newman passed the paper down to her granddaughter: Tracey Williams-Dillard.