Who created Black History Month, held every February
Who created Black History Month? It traces its origins on Negro History Week, created in 1925 by Carter G. Woodson.
Wochit
In 1985 Elaine Campbell was teaching English at New Iberia Senior High by day and going straight to her second job as a store clerk at the North Gate Mall in Lafayette after last bell. She had a family and an overfull plate, but she added one more thing to her schedule.
“There was not much news in The Daily Iberian for Blacks, and Blacks were doing some amazing things,” Campbell said. “But they were not being publicized. So I thought, ‘Let’s see if we can change a little bit of that.'”
Campbell founded The Ebony Journal, Iberia Parish’s first Black-owned newspaper since Reconstruction, to fill a gap she was seeing not only in her hometown paper but across the region.
“I enjoyed reading the newspaper because it gave you a picture of what’s going on,” she said. “I wanted to give a vision for the Black communities in Acadiana.”
With the help of a few other reporters, Campbell spent her weekends covering events and interviewing people she knew in communities across Acadiana, contacts she’d made through her decades of teaching in schools in Iberia and St. Mary parishes.
Then she typed up the reports at home and dropped them at the printer when she’d go to her second job in Lafayette.
She published the newspaper for 20 years, retiring from journalism in 2005 before retiring from teaching four years later.
“I enjoyed all of it, but my hair was getting gray so I had to retire,” the 89-year-old said with a laugh.
Now the Iberia African American Historical Society is working in conjunction with archivist and digitization specialists from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ernest Gaines Center and the UL Center for Louisiana Studies to preserve Campbell’s collection of The Ebony Journal.
“I’m grateful,” Campbell said. “It will help the paper to survive.”
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She also has a connection to the university, as she earned her “Master+30” degree from UL Lafayette.
Born and raised in New Iberia, Campbell graduated from high school in 1950 and moved to the West Coast to study political science at Los Angeles City College and San Francisco City College for a few years.
Her hope was to eventually go to law school, but family urged her to return home.
“I wanted to go to UCLA but my mama dragged me home,” she said.
She returned in 1957 to a segregated south Louisiana, and her mother was afraid for their family if Campbell, a young Black woman, pursued law school close to home.
“Those Black doctors had just been run out of town,” Campbell said.
She shifted her plans to teaching, completing degrees in education at Southern University and then UL. She went on to teach English and social studies at middle and high schools in Acadiana for 63 years. She even substituted a few years after retirement.
Campbell and her camera often could be seen at community events around the parish, covering news from local churches, schools, businesses and organizations and featuring members of the local Black community in The Ebony Journal.
Copies of her newspaper were deteriorating, as newspaper print becomes fragile and unstable over time. The papers had been stored for decades in non-archival containers and exposed to moisture, dust and mold, according to a release from the Iberia African American Historical Society.
The newsprint now is under the care of UL archivist and preservationist Cheylon Woods. In a slow, multi-step process to preserve the collection, Woods first froze the newspapers in small batches to arrest the mold growth, according to a release.
“The next step in the preservation process is to thaw the papers intravenously,” Woods said.
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Woods will then attempt to repair the paper where possible. She has been an archivist for more than a decade, the last six years at the Ernest Gaines Center.
“I’m always very excited to get to work with especially rural Black community to preserve their community and culture as they define it,” Woods said. “When we preserve The Ebony Journal or things like it that concern what we call counter-narratives, they fill the information gaps for a lot of people.”
Archiving The Ebony Journal will fill gaps for not only the people of the communities it served but also those who come long after.
“Newspapers do a good job of giving an overview of the ideology of the people connected to it,” Woods said. “A lot of research has been done on New Iberia, but it was lacking in the Black experience. This will fill that gap and make the information more accessible to future researchers.”
Once Woods finishes her work with the newspapers, the papers will then be transferred to the UL Digitization Center with the UL Center for Louisiana Studies under the supervision of Director John Sharpe, who will make a high-resolution scan of each page of the newspaper.
Finally, the restored newspapers will be returned to Campbell in proper archival boxes along with digital copies of her collection.
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The Ebony Journal will be available to the public as part of the archives of the future Iberia African American Historical Society Center at The Shadows, which will be housed on the second floor of The Shadows Visitors Center.
The newspaper was the second of its kind in Iberia Parish. During Reconstruction, African American businessmen and political leaders, Samuel Wakefield and Louis Snaer, were co-editors and co-proprietors of the newspaper, Iberia Banner.
Contact children’s issues reporter Leigh Guidry at Lguidry@theadvertiser.com or on Twitter @LeighGGuidry.
