Oral history interview with Nannie Mitchell Turner, 1971.

Biographical Note

Nannie Mitchell-Turner was born in 1887 in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1904 she married William Mitchell, moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and had a son, Frank, the following year. She worked as a caretaker until she, her husband, and her brother-in-law founded the St. Louis Argus in 1912. Initially she worked as an assistant to her husband, who was business manager, until his death in 1945. From that point onwards, she was business manager, treasurer, and president of the Argus until her death in 1975.

Scope and Contents

In this interview conducted with Henry La Brie III, Nannie Mitchell-Turner details her life history to frame her long career at the St. Louis Argus. She discusses her husband's education, how she became educated, and how the Argus ran without any formal journalistic training. Mitchell-Turner recounts the struggles of running the Argus without missing an edition during the Great Depression and two fires in their building. Also discussed in this interview: the scope of the Argus' reporting; its changing readership; expanding to white readership; her understanding of the future of the black press; the different approaches of the white press and black press; and competition in the newspaper business. Mitchell-Turner states that the black press is an important area of study and explains her criteria for calling a newspaper black.

Subjects

• African American journalists.
• African American press.
• African Americans--Civil rights.
• African American women journalists.
• Interviews.
• Journalism--Social aspects.
• Journalists--Interviews.
• La Brie, Henry G., interviewer.--http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ivr
• Newspapers--Circulation.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Saint Louis (Mo.)--Newspapers.
• Turner, Nannie Mitchell--Interviews.
• United States--Race relations.