Newspaper Arkansas Weekly Mansion (Little Rock, Ark.) 1880-1886 Arkansas mansion / Weekly mansion / Weekly Arkansas mansion

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About Arkansas Weekly Mansion (Little Rock, Ark.) 1880-1886

Little Rock is the Pulaski County seat and capital city of Arkansas, founded on the Arkansas River banks in the center of the state. After the Civil War, many Black residents settled on West Ninth Street (originally West Hazel Street), where the Union Army had built houses for the newly freed. Black businesses also centered on Ninth Street, in part because of Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation. Newspapers were one of the business avenues opened to Black citizens after the Civil War, and numerous Black-owned papers were founded in the capital city in the late 1800s.

After the Arkansas Freeman (1869-18??) closed in the 1860s, there were no Black-owned newspapers in Little Rock. It was not until August 7, 1880 that another Black-owned paper would appear. Coney O. Jacko (later styling himself as W. C. O. Jacques) was an artist who taught music in Little Rock. In 1880, he turned to the literary arts and founded the Arkansas Weekly Mansion, a 4-page Republican paper published every Saturday. The name of the paper was chosen by Mollie E. Harris, though it is not known why she chose Mansion for the title. The Mansion was sometimes incorrectly cited as the first Black publication in Arkansas, but the Freeman preceded the Mansion by a decade.

Jacko was a supporter of the Greenback Party, which supported greenback money that was not backed by gold. This money, greenback supporters argued, was better for farmers because it helped prevent inflation when money supply increased. Jacko used the Mansion to support Greenback candidates, giving the paper a populist slant. This was unique among other Black publications in Arkansas during the late 1800s, as most focused on arguing for greater civil rights for Black Americans.

After publishing a few issues, Jacko partnered with Henry K. Pittmore, a local businessman, for funding to help run the paper. Later, he and Pittmore decided to split the paper in two, with Jacko running the Mansion, and Pittmore running another Black newspaper whose name is lost to history. The Mansion continued to struggle, and Jacko brought in more investors, including H. H. Jackson, to shore up the mounting debts. However, by the end of 1881, Jacko sold the newspaper to investor D. I. Berry, who took over publishing duties.

The Mansion remained financially insolvent, leading Berry to bring in J. A. Jarrett and Henry Simkens as investors and staff. Simkens, a Canadian citizen who had recently moved to Arkansas, took over as editor and business manager. Simkens stood out among other Black editors in the United States because he took a less progressive stance and used the Mansion to oppose civil rights legislation.

Continuing financial struggles led stockholders to suggest Berry sell to I. B. Atkinson. Atkinson kept the paper running with Simkens as editor for a few months, but eventually stopped paying the staff and suspended the Mansion. Atkinson substituted his new paper, the Reformer. Meanwhile, Jacko bought printing materials from Jarrett and started a rival newspaper titled the Independent, which only lasted a few issues before it closed. Jacko sold the materials back to Berry and moved to Camden. Simkens and Berry organized the Mansion Publishing Company, commencing business on January 1, 1882, with Berry as president and Simkens the editor and business manager.

Despite its financial struggles, within the first few years the Mansion claimed a readership of 1,500 subscribers. It peaked at 2,000 readers in 1883 and 1884, with ads for the Mansion claiming to have the largest circulation of any weekly Black newspaper in the South. In 1883, the Mansion printed accounts of the Howard County Race Riot from several people who lived in the area. The paper went on to provide updates about the Black men who were arrested and charged with murder after the riot.

In the early part of 1884, Simkens wrote disparaging articles about the editors of another Black publication in Little Rock, the Arkansas Herald (established in 1881, publishing on Fridays). In the February 9, 1884 issue, Simkens addressed the Herald Company editors as “those maniacs, whoever they are, that control the columns of the Herald” and claimed that they were “trying to run a newspaper at the expense of their competitors.”

By late 1884 the Mansion had combined with the Herald. The two publishing companies combined into the Herald-Mansion Publishing Company to print the combined paper of the Herald-Mansion, with Julian Talbot Bailey from the Herald elected as editor. The Herald-Mansion continued the Mansion’s publishing schedule, releasing on Saturdays. Bailey worked at the Herald-Mansion for just a few months before taking a professorship at the Philander Smith University in Little Rock. Despite his short tenure at the Herald-Mansion, Goodspeed’s History of Pulaski County said that when Bailey was elected as the Herald-Mansion’s editor, the paper “was at once regarded as one of the leading negro journals of the country.” In 1885 Bailey joined Edward Allen Fulton’s newspaper, the Sun in Little Rock. Fulton had also previously been an editor at the Herald.

After Bailey left the Herald-Mansion, William M. Buford came on as editor. Buford previously worked as a teacher. By November 1885, the Mansion split from the Herald and resumed publication again under the Mansion Publishing Company. Berry returned as president, and in his reintroduction of the paper in the November 21, 1885 issue, claimed the Mansion to be “on a firmer basis than ever before.” The Mansion acquired a new office but returned to its roots and brought back the founder of the paper, Jacko, as the editor. In the same issue, Jacko pledged to provide a “newsy paper” that advanced the “cause of education and industry to our race.” B. F. Rowan was employed as the printer, with Benjamin Jarrett as general agent to canvass the state, and Mrs. B. F. Fry (whose husband, H. B. Fry, had been an editor at the Herald) as news agent in Texas.

In an 1885 issue, the Mansion rented out space for a page of the Mosaic Guide newspaper, a semi-monthly paper published by Pittmore. The Guide was the official organ of the Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), a Black fraternal organization founded in Little Rock (this Mosaic Guide was a separate publication from the later Mosaic Guide (18??-19??) newspaper for the MTA that began as the American Guide (1889-1???).

In 1886, Jacko served as president of the Colored Press Association. In 1887 the Mansion halted publication for the last time. The Mansion’s printing plant was sold to Buford, which he used to start the Arkansas Dispatch. Jacko, under the name Jacques, went on to become a traveling artist and lecturer.

As of this writing, there are few surviving issues of the Mansion and other Black newspapers published in Little Rock around that time. Past archival organizations were often neglectful of preserving the Black community’s written heritage, and the newspapers did not survive. When newspapers disappear, Black voices are forever lost, leaving a large gap in the understanding of our history.

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.