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.
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]
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]