PBA Galleries

44 pp. 18x11".

“This Journal is edited, printed and published entirely by natives of the Gold Coast”. English-language newspapers appeared in British colonial Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast in the early 1800s, but they were published by whites, mostly government officials, primarily for white European merchants, civil servants and missionaries, on the assumption that both the natives and most transplanted freed slaves from England and America were illiterate. After the first African-American newspaper appeared in Liberia in 1830, Black papers also sprang up in British colonies, in recognition of the growing number of mission-educated Africans. Charles Bannerman, son of a British lieutenant government of the Gold Coast and a princess of an African native royal family, launched the Herald, the first African-owned newspaper in West Africa, in 1858. It was circulated at first to only about 300 subscribers – 2/3 of them Africans – and endured for sixteen years, stimulating a proliferation of African-owned newspapers later in the 19th century. This issue includes reports of native uprisings and inter-tribal wars, details of court cases and trade conditions, and a few ads (one for a New York merchant). The poor print quality and the very limited subscription list attests to its rarity.