Baltimore Afro-American
The Baltimore Afro-American, known as The Afro, is a weekly African-American newspaper in Baltimore. It is the flagship of the AFRO-American chain and the longest-running African-American family-owned newspaper in the United States. The paper began in 1892, but its roots go back to 1889 when Reverend William Alexander started the Home Protector. It became the Afro-American on August 13, 1892 with investors like John R. Cole and others.
The Northwestern Family Supply Company briefly ran the paper in 1895, but bankruptcy almost ended it. In 1897 John H. Murphy Sr. bought the printing press, borrowing the money from his wife Martha Howard Murphy, and the Murphy family has owned it since. Murphy, a Civil War veteran who served with the United States Colored Troops, used the paper to promote Black unity and education and to fight racism. He was elected president of the National Negro Press Association in 1913.
In the early 1900s the Afro-American urged readers to vote against voter-disfranchising amendments, the Poe Amendment (1905) and later the Strauss Amendment (1908). In 1922 Carl J. Murphy took over and expanded the paper to nine national editions, with editions in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, Richmond and Newark. At its height there were many editions; today there are two city editions: Baltimore and Washington, DC.
The paper backed progressive candidates in 1924 and published important letters about Percy Lavon Julian in 1932. Carl Murphy used the paper to push for Black hiring in city jobs, Black representation in government, and a state university for Black students. In the 1930s the Afro-American started the Clean Block campaign to improve neighborhoods, campaigned against Jim Crow cars, and fought for equal pay for Black teachers.
During World War II the Afro-American sent reporters overseas and published the first Black woman correspondent, Elizabeth Murphy Phillips Moss. The paper worked with the NAACP on civil rights cases, including a suit against the University of Maryland Law School that helped lead to desegregation of public schools in 1954. The Afro also supported Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois during the McCarthy era.
Many notable writers and editors worked there, including Langston Hughes, Romare Bearden (as a cartoonist) and Sam Lacy, who urged integration in sports. After Carl Murphy died in 1967, his daughter Frances L. Murphy II and later John Murphy III led the paper. Both John H. Murphy Sr. and Carl J. Murphy are in the Maryland-DC Press Association Hall of Fame.
Today the Afro is run by descendants of John H. Murphy Sr. and partners with Morgan State University to train aspiring journalists. In 2007 a Mellon Foundation grant funded a project to study the paper’s archives and create an online database of its history.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:54 (CET).