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Chronicling America
National Endowment for the Humanities

Newspaper The Augusta Union (Augusta, Ga.) 1889-19??

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About The Augusta Union (Augusta, Ga.) 1889-19??

The Black-owned Augusta Union began publication in 1889 and ran for fifteen years, until 1904. Throughout its run, it had only one editor, Alford W. Wimberly. Wimberly was born in Burke County, Georgia, in 1859, and moved to Augusta in the 1880s. With the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, Black Georgians found their avenues for political participation quickly diminishing. Like other politically minded newspaper publishers of the era such as William Pledger of the Atlanta Age and John Deveaux of the Savannah Tribune, Wimberly’s founding of the Union went hand-in-hand with his political ambitions. Like his peers, Wimberly never held elected office, but grew to hold great influence over the Republican Party, especially in Richmond County. On April 30, 1905, the Augusta Herald described Wimberly as “practically the whole of the republican party in Augusta.”

The Union was a four-page paper published weekly on Saturdays. It carried local, national, and international news, along with Wimberly’s editorials. His time in the Republican Party had its share of turbulence, which the pages of the Union reflected. In 1898, Wimberly became engaged in a spat with a fellow editor of a Black newspaper, William Jefferson White of the Georgia Baptist. Wimberly alleged that White had misused his name in a fundraising appeal. Another editorial on January 27, 1900, denounced an unnamed opponent who “claims to adopt every principle of republicanism, worshiping to a fault at its shrine, yet is so opposed [the] leading pillars of the grand and edifying Republican structure.” As with the statewide party, Augusta Republicans fought with each other over the status of Black people within the party and the distribution of patronage appointments. In the 1900s, the local party split into two factions, each denouncing the other as “bolters.”

Wimberly seems to have struck a balance between accommodationism and activism. In 1898, he called for a Black boycott of the city’s streetcars in response to a recently passed Jim Crow law, and in 1907, he organized Black people to register to vote to stop the proposed disenfranchisement amendment to the Georgia constitution. In 1920, he also served as president of the Augusta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Yet, his writing also advocated for friendly relations with the white community in Augusta. To advance the city’s Black community, he promoted the virtues of industry and avoiding vice. After the Union closed, Wimberly went to start another paper, the Plain Dealer. He spent the last year of his life writing for the white-owned Augusta Herald on the happenings among the city’s Black citizens.

Note: A portion of the issues digitized for this newspaper were microfilmed as part of the Miscellaneous Negro newspapers microfilm collection, a 12 reel collection containing issues of African American newspapers published in the U.S. throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Creation of the microfilm project was sponsored by the Committee on Negro Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1947. For more information on the microfilm collection, see: Negro Newspapers on Microfilm, a Selected List (Library of Congress), published in 1953. While this collection contains selections from more than 150 U.S. newspapers titles, for further coverage, view a complete list of all digitized African American titles available in the Chronicling America collection.

Provided By: Digital Library of Georgia, a project of GALILEO located at the University of Georgia Libraries

About this Newspaper

Title

  • The Augusta Union (Augusta, Ga.) 1889-19??

Dates of Publication

  • 1889-19??

Created / Published

  • Augusta, Ga. : [A.W. Wimberly]

Headings

  • -  African American newspapers--Georgia
  • -  African Americans--Georgia--Augusta--Newspapers
  • -  Augusta (Ga.)--Newspapers
  • -  Richmond County (Ga.)--Newspapers
  • -  African American newspapers
  • -  African Americans
  • -  Georgia
  • -  Georgia--Augusta
  • -  Georgia--Richmond County
  • -  United States--Georgia--Richmond--Augusta

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Weekly
  • -  Began in 1889.
  • -  Also issued on microfilm from the Library of Congress, Photoduplication Service.
  • -  Archived issues are available in digital format from the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.
  • -  Description based on: Vol. 11, no. 26 (Jan. 27, 1900).

Medium

  • volumes

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn83016240

OCLC Number

  • 2715348

ISSN Number

  • 2833-6917

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

The Augusta Union Augusta, Ga. -19??. (Augusta, GA), Jan. 1 1889. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83016240/.

APA citation style:

(1889, January 1) The Augusta Union Augusta, Ga. -19??. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83016240/.

MLA citation style:

The Augusta Union Augusta, Ga. -19??. (Augusta, GA) 1 Jan. 1889. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn83016240/.