Good news, but since the @nytimes, along with other news outlets have framed the discussion around #WEBDuBois' 1920s letters, it might be good to give a bit more history, though it is still only a partial history, of the struggle over capitalization. 1/
#WEBDuBois didn't start the campaign for capitalization, it was decades old in the 1920s. Moreover, he wrote the NYT multiple times in the 1920s, including three in Nov 1925.
On Nov 9th, he refers to the practice of using lower-case as needless pin-pricks on the Black reader 2/
On Nov 9th, he refers to the practice of using lower-case as needless pin-pricks on the Black reader 2/
#WEBDuBois’ first call for capitalization was open and direct. On page 1 of his 1899 study, The Philadelphia Negro, he famously stated that he was using a capital N “…because I believe that eight million Americans are entitled to a capital letter." 3/
#WEBDuBois also wrote about capitalization multiple times in the @thecrisismag. For one example, here is “That Capital ‘N'" from February 1916, where he argues that a capital letter is used “for all proper nouns, all names of tribes, races, sects or organized bodies of men.” 4/
The proper noun argument is one that #TTFortune used slightly differently as he pushed the usage of Afro-American, a term he said would demand proper noun status. He made this argument many times from the 1890s into the 20th C, but most directly at a NNBL meeting in 1907. 5/
From the 1870s thru 1930s Black journalists & activists continuously argued for capitalization, most actively by adopting the practice on their own. The first known call for capitalization came from Ferdinand Barnett in his 1878 Conservator editorial, “Spell It With A Capital” 6/
Ida B. Wells-Barnett also demanded capitalization, as she declared in 1889 from the pages of her Memphis based paper, Free Speech: “rather than inserting sic after every failure of the white press to capitalize Negro, I have capitalized the word in all quotations…” 7/
After the turn of the century there was increasing pressure to adopt capitalization. In 1906 the New York Tribune ran a half page story on the issue. The AME Church Review & other Black publications were also running articles on capitalization around the same period. 8/
The real momentum in the campaign began in the second decade of the 1900s As already stated Du Bois was writing about capitalization in the Crisis, as were a number of Black newspaper editors, including Lester Walton, managing editor of Fortune's former paper, the New York Age 9/
Felling the time was right Walton took another step in 1913 & wrote to the Associated Press, asking for their adoption of the usage, as well as their encouragement of all newspapers to follow suit. Walton's letter for many scholars is the launch of the capitalization movement 10/
As seen by Du Bois' 1920s letters Walton's plea wasn't fully successful; though more papers adopted the change, many refused, including the @nytimes. In the Black community however, many kept up the fight, including Marcus Garvey in pt 11 of the UNIA's Declaration of Rights 11/
In 1929 #WEBDuBois' NAACP colleagues picked up Walton's campaign to openly call for the white press to adopt capitalization. Walton, no longer w/ the NYAge was quick to jump in & remind the public this was his campaign (The NY School Board had also agreed to adopt the change) 12/
It didn't matter who originated the idea, in 1929 the NAACP was finding their lobbying power & slowly more & more papers bowed to the pressure & changed their practice, including the NYT on 3.7.1930. The NAACP also noted the NYT's first use of a capital “N” on 3.8.1930. 13/
So, therefore the campaign did not start with #WEBDuBois in the 1920s, & was not even finished solely by him & his NAACP colleagues. The fight for capitalization is a long struggle that dated back decades before his letter-writing campaign, and was sustained by a... 14/
number of Black journalist & activists, as demonstrated by the @nytimes’ claim that it was not Du Bois, or the NAACP, that convinced them to change their practice, but rather Robert R. Moton of Tuskegee, “the foremost representative of the race in America.” 15.
Felling the time was right Walton took another step in 1913 & wrote to the Associated Press, asking for their adoption of the usage, as well as their encouragement of all newspapers to follow suit. Walton's letter for many scholars is the launch of the capitalization movement 10/
