Roscoe Dunjee: Crusading Editor of Oklahoma's Black Dispatch,1915–1955

Abstract

After founding a weekly newspaper in 1915, Roscoe Dunjee spent the next four decades taking leading stands on civil rights issues. He spoke out editorially, and he also took personal risks to test discriminatory laws. He supported others who fought to integrate public transportation and schools. An activist, he sought to use peaceful methods to encourage change. In World War II he pointed out the incongruity of condemning Nazism for its treatment of Jews when blacks suffered continuing discrimination. Such protest earned the attention of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, who was not able to get Dunjee prosecuted during the war. Dunjee is one of twelve black leaders, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, recognized as “giants in American journalism” by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.