Media Effect
While mainstream media had a role in the perception of the movement, it was African-American media outlets that most meaningfully portrayed the MOWM. Early in the spring of 1941, black newspapers displayed a level of skepticism at the movement’s lofty goals. The Chicago Defender worried whether even “2,000 Negroes would march.” The tone changed, however, as the date of the march approached. By May, black newspapers began to fuel the flames, and The Amsterdam News ran the front page headline: “100,000 IN MARCH TO CAPITOL.” If it was a simply tactic of bluffing, the same tactic was shared by black press as a whole. The Chicago Defender, after its initial skepticism, “spoke of 50,000 preparing for a March for jobs and justice.”
Read more about this topic: March On Washington Movement
Famous quotes containing the words media and/or effect:
“Never before has a generation of parents faced such awesome competition with the mass media for their children’s attention. While parents tout the virtues of premarital virginity, drug-free living, nonviolent resolution of social conflict, or character over physical appearance, their values are daily challenged by television soaps, rock music lyrics, tabloid headlines, and movie scenes extolling the importance of physical appearance and conformity.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)