Courtesy of HuffPost Detroit
The Plaindealer broke ground not only as Detroit’s first black newspaper but as one of the first of its kind in the country.
Its creators referred to the Plaindealer as an “Afro-American” newspaper, consciously rejecting the term “negro.” Founded in 1883 by the brothers Benjamin and Robert Pelham Jr., along with Walter H. Stowers and W.H. Anderson, the publishers saw the publication as a political effort and worked tirelessly at the project, putting it together in the spare time apart from their regular careers.
“The Plaindealer was the African-American voice. That was our voice,” explained Kimberly Simmons, chair of the Detroit Historical Society’s Black Sites Committee and president of the Detroit River Project. “You had a whole group of people here, and the only way they knew what was going on was the Plaindealer. So it was a huge deal.”
Only 2,821 African Americans lived in the city in 1880 at the time of the census, but the weekly paper met with rapid success. Simmons said the population was blossoming and hungry for news. This enthusiasm helped the Plaindealer grow from a small folio to a 20-page publication within a few years.
Simmons believes nearly every African-American family in the city at the time would have had a copy of the Plaindealer.