For Too Long Others Have Spoken for Us

STATES Introduce us to the history of the Afro-American newspaper and its role in the broader story of Black emancipation in the U.S. 

SAVANNAH WOOD The Afro-American Newspaper Company was founded in Baltimore in 1892. It is the oldest Black-owned business in the state and, we believe, the third-oldest in the U.S. It is part of the historic Black press—a vital institution in American history, serving as a counter-record to the official American narrative. The paper still exists today, after 133 years. It was founded by my great-great-grandparents and has remained a family institution ever since. I now direct Afro Charities, a nonprofit partner organization that preserves the newspaper’s archives and supports the company’s cultural mission. 

Tell us about the story behind its founding. 

SW The story of the Afro is somewhat complex, because the paper changed hands several times in its early years. My great-great-grandparents, John H. Murphy and his wife, Martha Elizabeth Howard Murphy, purchased it in 1897. Both were born enslaved in Maryland. John gained his freedom by fighting in the Civil War, while Martha’s parents purchased hers. Martha’s story is incredibly important to me and lies at the heart of my own research. Her early freedom and her father’s success in business laid the foundation for the paper’s long-term stability. She set the tone for the family and for the organization—and that legacy still shapes us today. 

Martha lent her husband the money to purchase the newspaper. She also bore and raised the children who later became its workforce. She was, in her own right, a community leader and organizer. She served as president of the Baltimore Colored Young Women’s Christian Association for eighteen years and held several other leadership positions. Together, John and Martha played an essential role in West Baltimore’s civic and social life. Yet, despite her influence, the city retains few visible traces of Martha’s contribution. Part of my mission is to ensure that her story is elevated and remembered, in Baltimore and beyond. 

One project we’re working on at Afro Charities is the creation of a public research center dedicated to the Afro archives. We purchased a historic mansion in West Baltimore and are currently renovating it, adding a modern extension to house the archives and a gallery. This building will also include communal spaces and offices, and we’re naming it after my great-great-grandmother: the Martha Elizabeth Murphy Research Institute. It’s essential that her name be permanently inscribed in the city’s memory. The institute is expected to open in early 2027. It will be the first time in the Afro’s history that the general public will be able to access and research this collection directly. 

Marie-Ann, how are you working with the archives as a curator? How did you discover the Afro newspaper? 

MARIE-ANN YEMSI My curatorial practice has long been concerned with archives from a decolonial perspective. My work often focuses on questions related to the Global South—Africa in particular—but also on the idea of community archives: what does it mean to affirm one’s presence in the world? 

Savannah and I met in Paris in 2022, during an exhibition by New York–based artist Xaviera Simmons at Kadist, a nonprofit organization dedicated to contemporary art. Simmons had been researching in this archive and presented a series of thirty-two photographic works and several film pieces inspired by it. Knowing my interest in archives, the Kadist team invited me to a dinner to meet her. That’s where we met. 

From that moment, I realized I was encountering an archive I knew nothing about, yet one that seemed absolutely essential for telling a renewed history. The existence of the newspaper isn’t unique, since many African American publications emerged from the 1850s onward, especially around the Harlem Renaissance and during the great marches from the 1940s to the 1960s. We often recall the March on Washington in 1963, but they began much earlier. Many of these publications disappeared, like Freedom’s Journal and others whose archives have vanished. 

What makes this case extraordinary is the survival of such a vast and largely preserved archive. For several years now, Savannah and her team have undertaken a monumental effort to organize and digitize the entire collection. It’s a long-term project, funded primarily by philanthropy, with four full-time archivists. 

Before World War II, the Afro was not only a local Baltimore paper; it had multiple editions across the U.S. They even had reporters in Paris. That outward-looking approach is remarkable. In Baltimore, the family was deeply engaged in social action, but always with an openness to the world. 

Coming from the field of contemporary art and cultural history, I was struck by the family’s ongoing relationship to artistic creation. Each generation has supported the arts. Take the example of writer Langston Hughes: the first photograph of him in the archives dates from when he was only twenty-seven. He maintained a lifelong relationship with the newspaper and its editors. In 1937, the Afro sent him to cover the Spanish Civil War, and we have photos of him with Hemingway, and with Nancy Cunard— known for publishing The Negro Anthology and who herself wrote for the Afro. 

These intellectual journeys, these circulations of ideas, show how visionary each generation has been. The deeper I dive into the archives, the more I perceive this forward-looking consciousness. That’s also how I approached my research during my residency with Villa Albertine: to understand how the Afro was embedded in the major movements of its time, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights movement. 

The Afro also gave itself the editorial mission to tell stories that were silenced, those concerning the Black community, from lynchings at the turn of the twentieth century to the activism that led to the Civil Rights movement. 

SW That idea has always defined the mission of the Black press. The first Black newspaper in the U.S., the aforementioned Freedom’s Journal, put it clearly in its inaugural editorial: “We wish to plead our own cause… for too long others have spoken for us.” 

Every successive Black-owned newspaper has carried that legacy forward, understanding that the so-called mainstream press—in reality, the white press—has never fully recognized Black humanity. It never had any interest in portraying us truthfully. The notion of “objective” news is, in fact, deeply subjective. The Afro and other Black papers made a deliberate choice: to tell our stories from within the community, to critique ourselves when necessary, but also to celebrate our best selves. 

In the 1930s and beyond, in an effort to sell more papers, the tone sometimes became more sensational—headlines shouting preacher in torrid love affair! in three-inch-high letters. But that coexisted with serious investigative journalism and fearless critiques of the State of Maryland and the country at large. 

One of the things that fascinates me most about the Afro is the fullness of human experience it reflects. Alongside hard-hitting political reporting, you find personal ads, letters to the editor, community announcements, notes from people “looking for love.” Together, these present a fuller picture of life in the Black community. 

Art has always been integral to that vision. Every generation of my family has included artists, and we’ve always understood the power of art to shape public consciousness. The Afro building itself used to host exhibitions, and people were invited on Saturdays to view local artists’ work that was temporarily hung in the boardroom. The paper also maintained close ties with Morgan State University, one of Baltimore’s historically Black universities. Its Fine Arts Center bears the name of my great-grandfather, Carl J. Murphy, who was the Afro’s second publisher and a major force behind the university’s development as a state institution. 

I come from an arts background. Early in my career, I worked in Chicago with the artist Theaster Gates, exploring how he reimagined archives and presented them to the public, which deeply influenced me. Later, I returned to Los Angeles to work with an organization called Clockshop, which was developing a project around the archives of science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. We invited artists and writers to create new works inspired by her collections. 

When I moved back to Baltimore and became executive director of Afro Charities, the first project I proposed was to invite contemporary artists to engage with the Afro archives. That initiative began in 2019, and led directly to our collaboration with Kadist in Paris. I met Joseph Del Pesco, one of Kadist’s international directors, for lunch in Baltimore and began imagining a partnership. He suggested Xaviera Simmons for the project, and she enthusiastically accepted. That collaboration, which had already been supported by Villa Albertine, became the foundation of the exhibition in Paris. 

The Afro has always been deeply tied to social and political movements. In its first decade, the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, one of the oldest in the country, was struggling to find its footing. Eventually, the Afro got involved, publishing its appeals and helping to revive it. My great-grandfather, who was then the paper’s publisher and editor, chaired the chapter’s Legal Redress Committee, the body that decided which cases the NAACP would take on. He worked closely with Thurgood Marshall throughout his career, even supporting him in gaining admission to law school. Later, when the chapter needed new leadership, he declined the presidency but recommended a remarkable woman, Lillie May Carroll Jackson, one of the most effective and visionary civil rights organizers of her time. She went on to lead the Baltimore NAACP from 1935 to 1970. 

His belief in women’s leadership was deeply rooted in family history: in his mother, Martha, and in his five daughters, all of whom he knew were capable of leadership themselves. 

MY What fascinates me in this story is the way it intertwines family history, community history, and the history of a socially engaged publication. It’s a relatively conservative family. If they supported Martin Luther King, who was close to them, the Afro published little about the Black Panthers, for example. What strikes me most is that, early on, women were placed at the forefront, something almost unheard of in the Western world at that time. Within this community, bonds of solidarity were woven around a shared conviction: that every Black person, confronted with dehumanization, must be supported. This deep sense of solidarity became a family legacy, transmitted across generations. Women were always part of the board from the beginning, and we see this solidarity in the openness toward communities we would today describe as LGBTQ+. 

While exploring the Afro archives, I came across photographs that truly surprised me: images from the 1930s and 1940s depicting what the newspaper then referred to as “transvestite.” The articles covered drag balls in a remarkably calm, almost matter-of-fact tone. What struck me most was the sense of solidarity that runs through those pages—this collective conviction that by being present for one another, without judgment, the entire community advanced together. 

That spirit of inclusivity reveals an awareness of making history, which perhaps explains why the newspaper kept everything. Much of the material hasn’t yet been processed, and I deliberately focused on the parts that remained unexplored, especially those linked to Black artistic and cultural life. Among the most fascinating discoveries was a 1953 letter from Langston Hughes to Savannah’s great-grandfather, during the Red Scare. In it, he reassured him: “I’ve just appeared before McCarthy’s committee, but don’t worry. I said I wasn’t a communist. I didn’t mention the paper. Here’s the transcript.” Reading the questions to Hughes from McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations, and his responses, felt like standing directly before history. 

I think of Romare Bearden, a now-celebrated artist who, between 1935 and 1937, worked as a cartoonist for the newspaper. Each of his drawings could easily be published now, as they reflect a prescient grasp of the rise of fascism, of racial violence, and of social struggle. 

The awareness that history was unfolding in real time permeates the archives. During the 1963 March on Washington, for example, the Afro chartered a plane to film the event. Most of the aerial images we know today were taken by their team. 

Savannah, could you walk us through these archives? What did you find when you arrived? 

SW The archives are immense. That’s the first thing you have to understand. We estimate there are about three million photographs in the collection, thousands of letters, recordings, notebooks, original cartoons, and objects—from drafting tables to oil portraits of the founders. There are tens of thousands of metal printing plates used to reproduce images in the paper. While not all are of research value, they are extraordinary artifacts. The archives also contain hundreds of bound volumes of the Afro, documenting each half-year from the 1910s to the 1970s. 

Because newspapers operate with thin profit margins, the archives have always existed in a delicate balance. Cultural value does not necessarily translate to financial value. Our goal now is to reorganize what was once an internal reference system for the Afro’s reporters into a public-facing archive, searchable and comprehensible to all. 

We’re starting with roughly 1,200 linear feet—more than 1,200 boxes. The process involves consolidating materials scattered across multiple boxes, creating clear finding aids, updating metadata, rehousing oversized or fragile items, but also re-identifying women who were often listed only under their husbands’ names. It’s detailed, time-consuming work. But it’s vital to ensure the collection’s long-term accessibility. 

Was there a moment, a document, an encounter that you found especially striking? 

SW Among my favorite discoveries are two that moved me. The first was the documentation of drag balls from the 1930s and 1940s that Marie-Ann mentioned. That discovery opened an entirely new line of inquiry for us. Now, when students come to research queer history, we know exactly where to guide them, so they can see themselves reflected in this lineage. It’s a deeply moving experience. 

The second discovery concerned my great-great-grandmother Martha. Family lore said she had lent her husband two hundred dollars to buy the newspaper, an astonishing sum for a woman born enslaved. In today’s money, that’s at least seven thousand dollars. I always wondered where that money came from. One day, I found a scrapbook that included her obituary. It featured a beautiful portrait of her and explained that her father had been a wealthy landowner by the time of his death, despite having been born enslaved himself. That document opened an entirely new set of questions about their lives, choices, and the historical contexts they navigated. It revealed how family history, business decisions, and survival strategies were all intertwined. 

Marie-Ann, you also spent time in these archives. Was there something that particularly caught your attention or moved you? 

MY In approaching the archive, I wanted to bring an outsider’s perspective. Savannah’s relationship to it is deeply powerful, intimate, and familial. Mine was external, and I think that raised new questions for everyone involved. 

I remember seeing a photograph of Langston Hughes with Nancy Cunard. Curious, I looked further and discovered that she had actually written for the newspaper—a story the team didn’t know. Those exchanges with the archivists were precious. They combine meticulous day-to-day work with a genuine intellectual curiosity about the broader historical and political implications of what they preserve. 

I also returned to the McCarthy report sent by Hughes, and later consulted the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. There, I found contrasting accounts: in the white press, Hughes was labeled a traitor and a communist “lucky to have been cleared,” while parts of the Black press accused him of renouncing his ideals. Even within the Black community, these differing views reveal the complexity and tension of the moment. 

What continues to fascinate me is how the Afro gave voice to those most marginalized within the community: women, LGBTQ+ people, and the poor. Very early on, the paper organized a campaign in the 1950s to provide Christmas gifts to children. 

There’s also this moving insistence on dignity. At a time when the Black community was constantly minimized and portrayed negatively, the newspaper countered that narrative. Through pages devoted to weddings, graduations, and local achievements, it proclaimed: “We exist. We progress. We contribute.” 

They even launched civic efforts, like neighborhood cleanup drives, to assert self-respect in the face of a society that dehumanized them. Each generation, through the Afro, contributed to rehumanizing and reaffirming their presence. 

During my three weeks of research, I uncovered extraordinary treasures, images of immense beauty and power. I hope they’ll appear in the forthcoming publication I’m working on. But with more than three million images, the work is far from complete. I hope to return to continue it, because this experience—confronting another version of history—has been profoundly moving. 

I’d like to ask you more about your relationship to archives as a curator, and specifically about your approach to exhibiting material that carries such emotional and political weight. 

MY I should say clearly that I don’t consider myself a historian. My approach is curatorial: I invite artists to engage with the archive and offer their own readings. I believe deeply in the power of art to renew our perspective on history. 

Our exhibition will, I hope, bring together Xaviera Simmons, whose work in the Afro archives I encountered at Kadist; Savannah herself, whose experimental film practice and family research add an essential layer; Michaëlle Sergile, whose archive-based artistic practice seeks to understand and rewrite the history of Black communities, and more specifically that of women, through weaving; and SHAN Wallace, an African American artist from Baltimore now based in New York and the first artist Savannah invited to explore the archive. SHAN’s photographic and collage-based work documents the systematic erasure of Black cultural spaces, often through gentrification. She has, for instance, chronicled the destruction of a historic market where members of the community gathered and danced on Saturdays after long workweeks. When such spaces disappear, memory disappears with them. We lose archives that lack the physical permanence of paper. That’s what interests me: those histories that have not yet become history. Who decides what matters? Who determines what counts as an archive? 

History has too often been written without the participation of the communities it concerns, denying them the power to define themselves. That’s true of Black and Indigenous communities in particular. We can imagine how much has been lost: not just material evidence but also intangible traces like oral traditions, songs, gestures. The Afro reveals some of those traces, yet they still need to be contextualized. My work with artists asks: who constructs the archive, who tells the story, and how? I aim to reintroduce Black subjectivity as a critical lens, allowing new perspectives to emerge and restoring missing images and voices. 

That brings us to a crucial issue, the question of absence, of missing archives, and of how literature or art can sometimes fill those gaps. 

SW We have to remember that despite the millions of photographs and documents in the collection, much is still missing. Even within what survives, there are silences, gaps that can never be fully filled. But as Marie-Ann pointed out, those absences are meaningful, too. In our family, certain values and ways of thinking have been transmitted generation after generation, not always documented, but deeply felt. That invisible cultural continuity explains how the Afro has survived for more than a century. 

In my current project for the upcoming exhibition, I’m exploring that question: what can be known from the record, and what belongs to family lore? For instance, there are at least two versions of the story about our relatives who fled Maryland via the Underground Railroad and settled in Canada. Some members of the Canadian branch tell it one way; some members of the Maryland branch another. Somewhere between the two is the truth. For me, the real interest lies not in determining which is correct, but in what each version reveals about the storyteller’s identity and understanding of that history. 

MY What interests me about the archive is not only what it tells us about the past, but how it reverberates in the present, how it reveals the enduring impact of structural and systemic violence on contemporary life. Rereading the archive, or reimagining it through the fictions artists create, allows us to better understand the world we inhabit today. 

That contemporaneity of the archive is central to my thinking. Each artist in the exhibition will bring a subjective point of view. It is essential, because for too long, others have spoken for us. It’s time to say: we speak for ourselves. 

There will also be a publication. Not a glossy coffeetable book filled with archival imagery, but a broader reflection on the meaning and vitality of the archive today. I’d like to include writers, poets, and thinkers—perhaps someone linked to Baltimore’s literary history—who can expand this dialogue. 

SW Of course, even with such a vast collection, the Afro archives are invaluable precisely because of all the histories that weren’t preserved elsewhere. Researchers often come to us after consulting official U.S. government records or white newspapers, and they find an entirely different version of events here. That contrast creates a productive tension, a dynamism that forces a nuanced understanding of American history. 

The archives also have immense genealogical value. Because the Afro’s photographers were meticulous about identifying people, many images include the names of everyone pictured. When families today search for their ancestors, they often find them in our pages: in wedding announcements, graduation notes, or community features. These seemingly small stories were, in fact, vital acts of affirmation, proof that Black lives were visible, dignified, and celebrated. 

For families who have lost their own personal archives, whether through displacement, housing instability, or economic hardship, the Afro’s collection has become an invaluable resource, a place where memory endures. There’s so much that has happened in the U.S. that affects what we can keep.

Savannah Wood is a Baltimore- and Los Angeles– based artist whose work in photography, text, and installation explores spirituality, domesticity, and place. She is the executive director of Afro Charities. 

Marie-Ann Yemsi is a curator and contemporary-art consultant. She has organized major international exhibitions, including Ubuntu, a Lucid Dream at the Palais de Tokyo, and A World of Illusions: Grada Kilomba in Cape Town. She is the director of the Villa Arson art center in Nice. 

This conversation first appeared in States, the annual magazine of Villa Albertine, published in January 2026.