The Oklahoma Eagle is a Tulsa-based Black-owned newspaper published by James O. Goodwin. Established in 1922, it has been called the voice of Black Tulsa and is a successor to the Tulsa Star newspaper, which burned in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. The Oklahoma Eagle publishes news about the Black community and reported on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre at a time when many white-owned newspapers in Tulsa refused to acknowledge it. The Oklahoma Eagle is also Oklahoma's longest-running Black-owned newspaper. The Oklahoma Eagle serves a print subscriber base throughout six Northeastern Oklahoma counties, statewide, in 36 U.S. states and territories, and abroad. It claims that it is the tenth oldest Black-owned newspaper in the United States still publishing today.
History
The Oklahoma Eagle started in 1922 after the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. African American businessman Theodore Baughman salvaged a printing press from the burned-out building of the Tulsa Star. The Tulsa Star was Tulsa's first Black-owned newspaper and was known as the "voice of Black Tulsa" with its coverage of the everyday lives of black Tulsans as they celebrated weddings, mourned at funerals, and marked graduations and anniversaries.
In 1936, Edward L. Goodwin Sr., also known as E. L. Goodwin, purchased The Oklahoma Eagle and added the slogan, "We make America better when we aid our people" to the paper's masthead. Edward L. Goodwin was a businessperson who owned rental properties in the Greenwood District of Tulsa and a shoeshine parlor. Edward L. Goodwin lived through the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and knew many who had died or lost loved ones and property; he purchased the newspaper in part to ensure that Tulsa would not forget its history.
The Oklahoma Eagle is tied to two historic newspapers, The Tulsa Star and the Oklahoma Sun. The Star was originally founded by publisher and editor Andrew Jackson Smitherman – who was also a justice of the peace and an attorney – as a daily newspaper, The Muskogee Star, in 1912. He was the first African American newspaper editor and publisher to produce a long-running daily in the state of Oklahoma. A year later, Smitherman moved to Tulsa and established the Tulsa Star. Smitherman hired businessman James Henri Goodwin, a Mississippi native with a fourth-grade education who migrated to Tulsa, as his business manager in 1916. Theodore Baughman, a pioneer in journalism in Kansas and Texas and a longtime advocate for racial equality, served as the Star's managing editor. Baughman left the Star and established the competing Oklahoma Sun on June 20, 1920.
On May 31, 1921, a race massacre – ignited on a wave of sexual assault rumors after a black teen jostled accidentally against a white woman in an elevator inside the Drexel Building – plunged Tulsa into a week-long act of unprovoked violence against the city's African American citizenry, economic, political and faith-based institutions. The deadly barbarian attack, which spanned every aspect of life within Tulsa, is recognized as one of the most heinous acts of domestic terrorism within the United States.
After losing the Star and his home in the massacre, Smitherman left Tulsa and eventually settled his family in Buffalo, New York.
Baughman remained in Tulsa, salvaged the Star's equipment and renamed his newspaper, The Oklahoma Eagle, opening its first office at 117 North Greenwood Avenue. In 1933, James H. Goodwin's son, Edward L. Goodwin Sr., became interested in buying the newspaper, but was repeatedly rebuffed by Baughman.
In 1936, the younger Goodwin prevailed, and Baughman allowed him to invest capital in the newspaper. Goodwin became the sole owner after Baughman died in 1937, and he relocated the paper to 126 North Greenwood Avenue.
Edward Goodwin said he purchased the Eagle, because he was tired of being vilified by the white Tulsa “metropolitan press” that disparagingly labeling him as “the black mayor of the City of Tulsa… because of the fact that I had become involved in all of these illegal operations. … So, the metropolitan press was so strong in their accusations against me, I said, ‘Well, I guess this is a good thing for me to do. I'm going to buy one of these papers.’”