Abstract:
The Weekly Challenger, an African American newspaper in St. Petersburg, Florida, proudly states the following front-page motto: “Keeping you connected to your community.” The Nelson Poynter Memorial Library at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is honored to partner with The Weekly Challenger to preserve and create digital access to this important community newspaper’s archives.
Description:
The Weekly Challenger, an African American newspaper in St. Petersburg, Florida, proudly states the following front-page motto: “Keeping you connected to your community.” The Nelson Poynter Memorial Library at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is honored to partner with The Weekly Challenger to preserve and create digital access to this important community newspaper’s archives. A long-time reader recently said for the paper’s 50th anniversary, “If the news is important to the community, then it is in The Weekly Challenger.” In 2016 the library started a digital archive of Weekly Challenger newspapers by scanning old papers and compiling digital files of recent issues. Once the project began, the library needed an effective way of sharing this valuable primary source content. To address that need the “Weekly Challenger African American Digital Newspaper Archive and Research Guide” was created. The guide and digital archive not only help preserve the newspaper’s record of regular news events, but also smaller individual stories and memories. The Weekly Challenger partnership is a potential source of “Power, Resistance, and Leadership” for St. Petersburg’s African American community, which has a long and rich history. This poster highlights communities as a source of knowledge that should be taught in academia and made available to the larger public. The partnership will help lead to better communication and understanding between the various communities that our special collections and archives serve. Research Guide URL: https://lib.stpetersburg.usf.edu/weeklychallenger
