Congratulations to The Bay State Banner, which is embarking on its 60th year of publication. The Banner, founded by Melvin Miller, covers the Black community in Greater Boston and beyond. It was acquired in 2023 by two Black journalists, Ron Mitchell and André Stark, and it continues to provide strong coverage through a weekly print edition and a robust website.
In an editorial marking the Banner’s milestone, Mitchell, now the publisher and editor, writes that Donald Trump represents a dangerous threat to Black and brown communities, observing that even Trump’s seemingly positive actions carry within them the whiff of segregation:
This Trump administration is the first one to have increased funding for historically Black universities and colleges. That is a good thing for HBCUs, which have historically been underfunded. But those increases, coupled with the attacks on DEI on historically white campuses and the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded ban on considering race in their admissions, contain dangerous echoes of the “separate but equal” doctrine that a prior Supreme Court unanimously ruled unconstitutional.
Mitchell also quotes W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote, “There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.” And he pointedly signs the editorial with his full name, Ronald Du Bois Mitchell.
This week’s edition also contains a reprint of the commemorative section that the Banner put together in celebration of its 50th anniversary. You can access the print edition online, but I’m going to have to track down a copy.
The Banner is a great example of how an independent local media outlet can serve a community not just by covering it, but by giving it a voice.
