John J. Oliver

Chairman of the Board & Publisher, The Afro-American

Balimore, Md.

[MD-E 0101]


When I was a kid – the thing – my father – who was the president of this paper with his cousin who was the chairman and his other cousins who were all around him – when he retired, as president, he had an old-world perspective of what this paper was supposed to be about.

When I was 5, 6, or 7 years old, I couldn’t understand: Why is this paper called Afro? Why are we only writing about black people? I don’t understand, and I don’t like it – until.

Carl Murphy ran a picture of Emmett Till on the front. That changed my life. I just had to look at that – for hours. I couldn’t understand how any human being could do that to another human being.

And then, it dawned on me: Racism. Hatred.

And, suddenly, I realized why we had The Afro.