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Newspaper Oakland Sunshine (Oakland, Calif.) 189?-19?? Sunshine

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About Oakland Sunshine (Oakland, Calif.) 189?-19??

The Oakland Sunshine, one of Oakland, California’s early African American newspapers, likely began publication in 1897, and it published weekly Saturday issues until 1922. John A. Wilds, the creator and original editor of the paper, was a member of the Afro American Council and regularly worked with activists and organizations fighting for equal educational opportunities for African American children. Wilds was always a proponent of racial equality and spent much of his life in service to the Black community.

According to librarian Dorothy Lazard of the Oakland Public Library, in her article “African Americans Establish a Growing Community in Early Oakland,” Oakland had a thriving African American community, with many people having migrated west in search of opportunity. Newcomers found work as laborers, dressmakers, hotel workers, sailors, and especially railroad porters Oakland served as the western terminal of the Transcontinental Railroad, and the Pullman Company, a well-known railroad company, exclusively hired African Americans as porters to assist passengers. The Black community of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Oakland grew steadily in numbers, but individual residents and families were geographically separated and had difficulty sharing news and information.

The creation of the Oakland Sunshine helped to increase communication amongst the Oakland African American community, with its masthead stating that it was “a paper for the people, a fireside companion, it is true if you see it in the Oakland Sunshine.” An article of March 27, 1915, titled “Madame Hackley’s Recital” states, “We are so sparsely settled here that it is almost impossible to depend on the old time grapevine route for news and we must use the newspapers and when we fail to let the people know what we have on foot we can hardly expect them to turn out.”

Over the course of its 25-year run, the Oakland Sunshine provided residents with regular updates about town events, social life, nearby businesses, and, most notably, the state of the African American race in the United States. J.W. Green served as editor of the newspaper from its early years until 1909, when Wilds sold the paper to James M. Bridges, a businessman from Hickory County, North Carolina, who had moved to California in 1889. The paper continued reporting on local events and informing its subscribers about the progress of civil rights for African American people.

The Oakland Sunshine strongly supported equal educational opportunities for African Americans and regularly published articles with updates about segregation in education occurring in California. From 1913 to 1915, the paper published articles in support of the newly constructed town of Allensworth, the first town in California to be completely run and financed by African Americans, and reported on political debates about the new town schools.

In 1915, historian Delilah Beasley began writing for the paper. From a young age, Beasley wrote articles for both African American and white newspapers in Ohio before moving to Oakland in 1910. As a special editor of the Oakland Sunshine, Beasley began contributing articles documenting African American activity when her first article was published in the June 26, 1915 issue of the paper. This article, “Colored Race at the Exposition,” discussed Beasley’s invitation to join the paper and the status of African American participation in expositions.

The Oakland Sunshine was one of several African American newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area and was a member of the National Negro Press Association. Other newspapers published during this time include the Western Outlook, the California Voice, and the Western Appeal. In the February 22, 1922 issue, editor J.M. Bridges expressed hope for a consolidation of African American newspapers in the Bay Area due to high printing costs and stated that there should be one newspaper in Oakland and another in San Francisco. According to historian J. William Snorgrass in the article “The Black Press in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1856-1900,” this merger and cooperation never happened, and the Oakland Sunshine eventually ceased publication in 1922.

Note: The issues digitized for this newspaper were microfilmed for and sponsored by the Committee on Negro Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and Bell & Howell, a microfilming company, by the Library of Congress, Photoduplication Service in 1947, compiling African American newspapers published in the U.S. throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. 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 many 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: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

About this Newspaper

Title

  • Oakland Sunshine (Oakland, Calif.) 189?-19??

Other Title

  • Sunshine

Dates of Publication

  • 189?-19??

Created / Published

  • Oakland, Calif. : J.M. Bridges

Headings

  • -  African Americans--California--Newspapers
  • -  African American newspapers--California
  • -  Oakland (Calif.)--Newspapers
  • -  Alameda County (Calif.)--Newspapers
  • -  African American newspapers
  • -  African Americans
  • -  California
  • -  California--Alameda County
  • -  California--Oakland
  • -  United States--California--Alameda--Oakland

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Weekly
  • -  Available on microfilm from the Library of Congress, Photoduplication Service.
  • -  Description based on: Vol. 10, no. 52 (Dec. 21, 1907).

Medium

  • volumes

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn84025837

OCLC Number

  • 10384635

ISSN Number

  • 2995-6498

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:

Oakland Sunshine Oakland, Calif. 189?-19??. (Oakland, CA), 189?. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84025837/.

APA citation style:

(189?) Oakland Sunshine Oakland, Calif. 189?-19??. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84025837/.

MLA citation style:

Oakland Sunshine Oakland, Calif. 189?-19??. (Oakland, CA) 189?. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn84025837/.