A qualitative examination was made of the black newspaper, "The Blade" in Parsons, Kansas, during two six-week periods: September 24-October 29, 1892, the first available issues of the paper, appearing just prior to national elections; and October 23-November 27, 1897, which included two weeks before and four weeks after local elections. The intent was to explain the marked changes that occurred between the periods and evaluate the newspaper's possible influence on the course of local events by considering the experience of the black community in Parsons before and after the 1890s. The analysis revealed that the early "Blade's" inside editorial and local news pages protested oppression and projected to blacks an image of themselves as participating members of society. But its clippings endorsed the status quo of American society, which perceived individual blacks as threatening and ignored the existence of a black community. The 1897 "Blade" lacked a sufficiently developed national communications network that in a more systematic way could have offered evidence to show that the increasing black consciousness and the white reaction against it were not simply local phenomena. (HOD)
