In spite of, or maybe because of, the city’s substantial population Black population, the Picayune revealed blatant disrespect against Africa Americans. Scholarship on racism in mass media examined content that portrayed black people as negative stereotypesor focused on mass communication that erased African Americans from the day-to-day societal affairs. Studies, however, failed to examine mass media’s use of the nasty, vitriolic concept nigg*r. This author discovered the slur in an issue of the Picayune and searched for content that contained nigg*r. The author found the word readily and surmised that its use supported the brutal treatment of Black people and was detrimental to African Americans who agitated for equal legal protection.
In the North during the period of enslavement, free Black people accessed educational and employment opportunities that were unavailable to their counterparts in the South. On August 7, 1855, the Picayune published a short report titled “The Nigg*r Insolence.” In the article about white exclusivity in Sarasota Springs, N.Y., the reporter said a lawyer brandished a gun and said he would “shoot the first nigg*r” who attempted to drink from white-only beverage glasses. Apparently, white lips were better suited for drinking glasses than those of free Blacks.
Back in the South, two months before the states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment that ended slavery, the Picayune in a crime-story brief published October 24, 1865, said police officers arrested a young “nigg*r” on Canal Street, the main thoroughfare in the central business district in New Orleans. The paper said the “nigg*r boy” was trying to sell an officer’s breastpin. A year later, a Picayune reporter wrote on December 16, 1866, that Black people appeared in court records accused of breaking laws disproportionally more than whites. The reporter quoted an unidentified Black man as saying, “De fact is, a nigg*r, what is a nigg*r, out and out, can’t manage himself: dis freedom is death to him, and he can’t control himself no how.” The reporter quoted a Black man whose comments reinforced racist stereotypes.
Reporters most often chose the story topics, the people whom they interviewed, and the comments individuals uttered. Editors typically wrote the headlines. On May 1, 1870, the headline, “A Scotchman in a Nigg*r Church” appeared on a letter to the editor. The text said,
Before leaving my country I had heard a good deal about the nagger [sic] but never saw many until I crossed the Atlantic…I was curious to see whether those religious fits would have any lasting effect on the nigg*r woman.