Early Twentieth-Century Heroes

Abstract

This article explores the role of the black press in creating and portraying role models to the largely urban black community of the 1920s, 1930s, and the first half of the 1940s, leading up to Jackie Robinson being chosen to break major league baseball's color barrier in 1947. It seeks a better understanding of daily reality for this community by looking at black press sports coverage of these exclusively male figures. By examining the values, goals, and actions held up by the black press as those to model and mirror, it is perhaps possible to better understand what the black community of the period sought in its hero figures and important people and, therefore, how its members saw themselves and who they hoped to become. This study assumes a scope and function of the hero in society as a phenomenon of mass media communication.