Upcoming Phoenix Roundtable to Spotlight the Legacy of Black Publishers and Journalists, Showing Impact of Media as a Way to Survive

tmanon1
Sep 23
2 min read

Community leaders, historians and writers will gather to reflect on the legacy of Black media families and the Great Migration as author and civic leader Arianne Edmonds headlines the discussion.

By: MMM Editorial Team

Phoenix, AZ — On September 26, 2025, Black River Life will host a powerful roundtable discussion exploring the history of Black newspaper families and their ongoing influence on American life. The event, titled Black Newspaper Families and the Great Migration Legacy, highlights the release of Arianne Edmonds’ forthcoming book, We Now Belong to Ourselves (Oxford University Press, 2025) and will be held at Grassrootz Bookstore.

Edmonds is a fifth-generation Angeleno civic leader, archivist, and Senior Civic Media Fellow at USC Annenberg. Her new book weaves together poetry, personal narrative, and family archives to trace how Black publishers like her great-great-grandfather, Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, used the press to define Black citizenship, build networks of resistance, and preserve joy after Reconstruction.

“The Black press was not just about news — it was a blueprint for survival and progress,” Edmonds writes in We Now Belong to Ourselves.

The roundtable will bring together journalists, historians, and descendants of Black newspaper publishers to reflect on the Great Migration and its cultural legacy.

Participants will share how family archives, ancestral memory, and Black media continue to inform identity and justice movements today.

[Related: How Community Archives are Reshaping Historical Memory]

About the Book

We Now Belong to Ourselves chronicles the life and work of Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, founder of The Liberator newspaper. Edmonds’ paper championed women’s rights, land ownership, and civic engagement while condemning lynchings and racial violence. His great-great-granddaughter’s book situates this work within a long tradition of Black resistance and joy