Scott, William Alexander II
1902-1934 · Contribution: 1928-1934
Newspaper founder
Founded the Atlanta World in 1928 at age 26, which became the Atlanta Daily World in 1932 — the first successful African American daily newspaper of the 20th century — and built the nation’s first chain of Black newspapers, eventually growing to fifty publications
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- 1902, Edwards, Mississippi
- Active since
- 1928
- Category
- Press & Photography
- Best known for
- Founding the Atlanta Daily World and the first Black newspaper chain
Impact on the world
Scott proved a Black daily newspaper could not only exist but thrive as a business, and his syndicate model brought coordinated Black journalism to dozens of cities.
Sources
- BlackPast.org
1 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
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Sengstacke, John Herman Henry
1912-1997
Inherited the Chicago Defender from his uncle, founder Robert Abbott, in 1940, converted it to a daily newspaper in 1956, and founded the National Newspaper Publishers Association the same week as Abbott’s death, uniting the country’s Black-owned newspapers into a collective national voice for the first time
Abbott, Robert Sengstacke
1870-1940
Founded the Chicago Defender in 1905 with a 25-cent investment, building it into the most influential Black newspaper in the country and a primary catalyst of the Great Migration of roughly 1.5 million Black Southerners northward
Davis, Frank Marshall
1905-1987
Transformed the Atlanta Daily World into the first successful African American daily newspaper as its managing editor in the early 1930s, then spent twelve years as executive editor of the Associated Negro Press while building a parallel career as one of the era’s most acclaimed social-realist poets