About The West Virginia digest. [volume] (Charleston, W. Va.) 1939-1946
Charleston, W. Va. (1939-1946)

The West Virginia Digest

The West Virginia Digest was an African American weekly newspaper operating out of Charleston, West Virginia. It ran from December 1939 to 1946; however, surviving issues end with the October 20, 1945 issue. Throughout its run, the Digest had two prominent African American editors: the first was Ira James Kohath Wells (I.J.K. Wells), and the second was E.L. Powell. Released steadily every Saturday from 1939 to 1942, issues became more infrequent by 1943 as financial issues and editorship change took their toll. Nevertheless, the Digest was a widely read African American paper, boasting of a 40,000-subscriber readership, and it supplied the West Virginian African American community news that catered to their interests. The Digest was anti-racist and devoted itself to reporting on continued discrimination and violence against African Americans. Of interest is the Digest's reporting on segregation in the U.S. military during World War II, routinely calling out the hypocrisy of U.S. racialized democracy.

The Digest had two different editors, I.J.K. Wells and then E.L. Powell, prominent middle-class African American intellectuals living in Charleston. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Wells was born July 1, 1898, in Jefferson County, Arkansas, but moved to Pennsylvania by 1923 to attend Lincoln University. As a student, he began his extensive career in the Civil Rights Movement. Earning his degree in business, Wells moved to Charleston, West Virginia to teach in a segregated school. By 1933, he was the first State Supervisor of Negro Education. Wells' firsthand experience with the neglect and discrimination African American students faced in the West Virginia segregated school system of the 1930s led him to the editorship of the Digest, where he amplified African American voices, concerns, and news. Wells left the paper by 1942 to pursue more education at the University of Pittsburgh, and he later founded the nation's first African American pictorial magazine Color. The Digest under Wells provided politically moderate criticisms of racial discrimination, which quickly transitioned into critical patriotism with the advent of U.S. involvement in World War II.

This changed under the editorship of Powell, who spearheaded the Digest from late 1942 until its end sometime in 1946. Powell was the manager of the Charleston branch of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance company and in 1942 ran for local office under a democratic nomination. The Digest under Powell advocated more militant and proactive resistance to racial segregation and actively criticized the United States government throughout the remaining years of World War II for hypocrisy in claiming to fight for democracy yet being racially anti-democratic domestically. Moderate upper-class African Americans also became targets of criticism for being too concerned with maintaining respectability. For instance, Powell called for increased militancy from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, advised his readers to directly combat their racial discrimination and to reject the "good negro" motif white political leaders expected of them, and criticized local African Americans that appeared to side with any white racists. Former editor I.K.J. Wells was criticized by the Digest in 1943 for defending the author and use of a racist West Virginia history textbook that demonized enslaved Africans during the nineteenth century.

The Digest ceased in 1946, due to financial reasons. Issues available go up to October 1945. Throughout its run, the Digest ran weekly African American syndicated and exclusive columns such as Gordan B. Hancock's "Between the Lines" and John F. Matheus's "Pegasus." Other columns included a section on the social life of the West Virginia Black community, as well as a section on national and local sports and African American players. Electorally, the Digest was pragmatic and non-sectarian by supporting both parties depending on the candidate, demonstrating the effect New Deal democratic policies and the growing elitism of the Republican party had on the African American vote.

Provided by: West Virginia University