Lewis Ossie Swingler Explained

Lewis Ossie Swingler (August 28, 1906  - September 25, 1962) was a pioneering African-American journalist, editor, and newspaper publisher from Crittenden County, Arkansas. He was editor of the Memphis World and editor in chief and copublisher of the Tri-State Defender.

Early life

Swingler was born in Crittenden County in 1905. He was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma,[1] where he attended Booker T. Washington High School. Swingler went on to attend the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), where he graduated with a degree in journalism.[2] While in college, Swingler helped organize the first chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha at UNL[3] and edited the Sphinx, a publication of that fraternity.[4]

Career

Directly after graduating, Swingler moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he was a pivotal figure in the establishment of the Memphis World. He served as its editor from its founding in 1931 until he left in 1951 to start the Tri-State Defender with John H. Sengstacke.[1] During this period Swingler also taught journalism at LeMoyne College.[3]

Swingler used his position in Memphis's black community to advocate for civil rights. For instance, in 1948 Swingler and a number of other prominent black citizens of Memphis pressed the police department to hire African American officers as a way of reducing police brutality.[5] This effort was ultimately successful.[6] Swingler also joined an early voter registration group, Joseph Edison Walker's Non-Partisan Voters Committee, in 1951.[7]

In 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott, Swingler was the southern vice president of Alpha Phi Alpha. After fellow Alpha Martin Luther King Jr. was indicted in Montgomery, Swingler was among a delegation which travelled there to support King.[8]

Swingler died on September 25, 1962, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, of a heart attack.[4]

Notes and References

  1. Book: Marina Pacini. Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Photographs from the Memphis World, 1949-1964. 28 August 2012. 15 September 2008. Univ. Press of Mississippi. 978-0-915525-10-2. 17.
  2. Book: Clayborne Carson. David J. Garrow. Bill Kovach. Carol Polsgrove. Reporting Civil Rights: American journalism, 1941-1963. 28 August 2012. 2003. Library of America. 948. 9781931082280.
  3. News: Newspaper veteran maintains 'first love'. Tri-State Defender. November 10, 2011. George E. Hardin. August 28, 2012.
  4. This Week's Census. Jet. 28 August 2012. 11 October 1962. Jet Magazine. 28. 0021-5996.
  5. Book: Laurie B. Green. Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle. 28 August 2012. 28 May 2007. Univ of North Carolina Press. 978-0-8078-5802-8. 105–6.
  6. Book: Margaret McKee. Fred Chisenhall. Beale Black & Blue: Life and Music on Black America's Main Street. registration. 28 August 2012. 1 September 1993. Louisiana State University Press. 978-0-8071-1886-3. 93.
  7. Book: Christopher Silver. John V. Moeser. The Separate City: Black Communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968. 28 August 2012. 20 April 1995. University Press of Kentucky. 978-0-8131-1911-3. 52.
  8. Book: Martin Luther King Jr.. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Volume III: Birth of a New Age, December 1955-December 1956. 28 August 2012. 27 February 1997. University of California Press. 978-0-520-07952-6. 119.