As in most small towns in the 1930s, local newspapers on the Maryland Shore were more than just sources of news. They were a key means by which communities learned about the goings-on in adjacent towns and through which communities polished their image. Stories in local papers most often showed the “best face” of the town. Shore papers were no exception. There was a kind of “booster” quality to the reporting. Bad news—about the failing Shore economy, for example—was downplayed. Positive, upbeat stories about charity drives and local civic activity were prominent. National news included one or two stories about the rise of Nazism in Germany and Winston Churchill’s ill health but tended toward the more mundane. The impending repeal of Prohibition was a big story, which papers large and small never seemed to tire of. But for the most part local papers were a conduit through which Shore towns could reflect their best self-image.
A plethora of local papers chronicled life on the Shore—the Democratic Messenger in Worcester County, the Marylander and Herald in Somerset County, the Star-Democrat in Talbot County, and the Cambridge Banner in Dorchester County. In Wicomico County, the local paper was and still is the Salisbury Times, known today as the Daily Times. Purchased by the Truitt brothers, Charles and Alfred, in 1923, the Salisbury Times provided a daily diet of national news and chronicled life in Wicomico County, from the trivial to the monumental. No community event was too small to escape mention in the Times—garden club meetings, engagements, charity drives, were all given the careful and supportive attention that only a local paper, steeped in the community, can give. Unless of course the event in question took place in the black community. News about the new black high school, about black church fund-raisers, and about the doings of black civic groups did not appear in the pages of the Times in the early 1930s, and if they did, they were relegated to small announcements buried in the back pages of the paper.
National news included one or two stories about the rise of Nazism in Germany and Winston Churchill’s ill health but tended toward the more mundane. The impending repeal of Prohibition was a big story, which papers large and small never seemed to tire of. But for the most part local papers were a conduit through which Shore towns could reflect their best self-image.This is not to say that stories about blacks never appeared in the Times. They did. These stories, however, were invariably accounts of black criminality. Historian Cezar Jackson opens his study of local media responses to the lynchings in the 1930s with an observation that a month before the murder of the Green Davis family, the Salisbury Times ran a front-page story describing the flogging of a black man convicted of domestic assault. The flogging was administered with a whip by the Wicomico County sheriff Murray Phillips and was attended by Levin C. Bailey, the state’s attorney for the county. Although the flogging was held inside the jail, 300 people stood outside and did not disperse until the beating had been completed.