The Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor “Takes its stand” as a “White Man’s Newspaper” March 1869

I found this ad in the Mobile Register. The Independent Monitor was founded in 1837 and it went out of business in 1872. The newspaper, like many in the South, declared that it was a “WHITE MAN’S NEWSPAPER.” Like many Southern conservative voices, it claimed to want to protect Blacks by denying them any rights.

Mobile Register
Thursday, Mar 25, 1869
Mobile, AL
Vol: II
Issue: 47
Page: 4

The article says that the editor is not willing to place African Americans on the same “footing” as the “descendants of Adam. Christian’s had believed that all people are descended from Adam and Eve. This is referred to as “monogenisis.” This made everyone on earth cousins. Racist theory in the 19th Century claimed that each race had begun separately and that we are not “all brothers.” This became known as “polygenisis.”

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3 thoughts on “The Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor “Takes its stand” as a “White Man’s Newspaper” March 1869

  1. an example of how “nationalism” merged with the “scared” – the use of Christianity to justify a bio-political ideology promoting a separatist identity and political structure and the “nation-state”?

  2. Editor Ryland Randolph himself was notorious as a self-confessed Klan leader. Take a look at the footnotes referring to statements from Randolph to author in the Klan chapter. Or my book, Reconstruction in Alabama.

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