A. J. Smitherman

Andrew Jackson Smitherman was born in Childersburg, Alabama on Dec. 27, 1883. He was the second of eleven children. His father owned a coal business and his mother was a schoolteacher.[2] His family moved to Indian Territory when he was a child. After finishing secondary school, he attended the University of Kansas and Northwestern University. He earned his Juris Doctor from La Salle University and studied in Chicago and Boston.[3]

Smitherman began his journalism career at William Twine's Muskogee Cimiter in 1908.[4] In 1909, he became vice-president of the Associated Negro Press and in 1910 he became the president of the association, a position he would hold until 1921.[3] In 1912 he established his own paper the Muskogee Star. In 1913, Smitherman moved to Tulsa, where he founded the Tulsa Star which would continue to publish until the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921.

The Star was a Democratic Party aligned newspaper, which was uncommon for African American newspapers of the time which tended to lean Republican. Smitherman advocated self-reliance and resistance to the mob violence and lynchings African-Americans faced.[4] In 1919, he was selected as a delegate to meet Woodrow Wilson during his visit to Oklahoma City.[3] After an outbreak of lynchings in Oklahoma in 1920 Governor James B. A. Robertson organized an interracial conference and invited Smitherman to be one of the African American leaders involved.[5] In response to violence against African Americans, Smitherman argued for black communities to arm themselves and organize to prevent lynchings.[3]

Smitherson died in Buffalo, New York in June 1961.[5][6]

Smitherson was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2020-2021.[8][9]

• National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame
• Tulsa Outrage