You could say that the news business is in her DNA, almost literally. Frances “Toni” Draper is now in her second stint at the helm of The Afro, a storied publication at the highest echelons of the nation’s legacy Black press. She became president of the paper in 1987 and left in 1999 to pursue ministry. In 2018, she returned for what was supposed to be a one-year transition, but is still here.
Draper is the great-granddaughter of John H. Murphy Sr., who was born a slave in Baltimore in 1840 and went on, in 1897, to help re-establish the Afro-American newspaper. In 1900, Murphy and collaborator George F. Bragg Jr., editor of the Ledger (another African American newspaper), together formed the Afro-American Ledger.
Generations of Murphys have gone on to work at the publication, sometimes reluctantly. Draper at first wanted no part of the business herself, but things didn’t work out that way. “We all went into different professions including law, education, and medicine, but over the years, the publisher role has always been filled by family members, including my mother,” Toni Draper said in a biographical essay published on the Baltimore Together website.
The Afro-American, or The Afro as it is now known, has long served as a window into the world of Black Baltimore. Over decades, the paper published activities and events, most of which would have been ignored by other media, while providing work for African American printers, journalists, and others who would not have been able to find work elsewhere.
The Afro has always done more than report the news. Editors used the paper’s influence to shape the political and social order of the African American community, and provided a medium for politically active African Americans to voice opinions concerning educational affairs. The newspaper was a strong advocate of education and proper educational facilities.
The Afro has survived as it faces the same forces buffeting journalism everywhere. Draper serves on the advisory committee of Rebuild Local News, an organization representing 3,000 newsrooms that advocates for policies and laws that strengthen newsgathering. The Afro has also joined with other legacy Black publications to create WordInBlack.com, another platform for Black writers and issues. Draper spoke with Baltimore Fishbowl about the past and the future of The Afro, in a conversation that has been lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.
Baltimore Fishbowl: How would you describe the current mission of The Afro, in the city and the region?
Toni Draper: I think the mission is consistent with what the mission has always been. It’s not so much a change in the mission; it’s more the change in how the mission is executed. To answer your question specifically, I think our mission still is to amplify Black voices, and also to advocate for the Black community. I think it’s also a mission to inform not just the Black community, but the entire community, about the accomplishments, the struggles, the advances, the needs of the community that we serve. And also really to highlight not just the things that grab the headlines or the first 10 minutes of local news, but also to uplift communities.
BFB: You said the mission is the same, but the way it’s executed has changed. Talk to me about how it has changed.
TD: The Afro is the oldest Black-owned business in the DMV. It is the third-oldest – and I didn’t say media company — business of any kind…in the United States, and is the oldest family-owned continuously published Black newspaper group in the country. Having said that, we’ve seen a lot of changes, especially in technology, from the typewriter to AI. So the methods of getting out the news, regardless of the property that you represent, has evolved over the years. …. We’ve had a dot-com for 35 years, for example. We are always evolving. The evolution that has to happen all the time in any business, but in media we live it and breathe it.
BFB: What are you most proud of during your current stint as CEO?
TD: One thing that I’m proud of is just continuing the legacy, especially in the environment that we’re in, and we both have heard so many stories of newsrooms closing and people not being able to pivot. So I’m proud of our ability to pivot quickly. Smaller organizations can pivot a little more quickly than larger organizations. We can turn the ship a little faster…even, for example, in the pandemic, when we decided to go home and work from home. It wasn’t a six month “think about it; plan it out.” It was on a dime. …I’m also proud of the fact that when we pivoted during the pandemic, we were also able to shift, if you will, our climate and culture to an extent that people still felt engaged and involved and cared for, as we needed to do during that time.
Endorsements continue
BFB: Are there recent stories that you’re most proud of?
TD: I am proud of the way we cover our local communities. I am proud of the fact that there are stories that we break, that our stakeholders bring to us first, because they know that we’re going to do a fair treatment of that particular subject matter. So when we break a story, we’re proud of that. What stories are we proud of? We are proud of the fact that we broke the Cathy Pugh [mayoral resignation] story first. CNN called us and said, is that true?….We didn’t dignify that with a return call. We just figured we are a paper of record. We’re proud of the fact that we continue to interview and endorse political candidates, and a lot of news organizations have stopped doing that. We’re proud of the fact that, as I said earlier, we get into the community and so you don’t have to commit a crime to get on the front page of The Afro. …Good news makes the front page, as well as more challenging news …And we were the first to endorse, under my tenure, Wes Moore. We endorsed Wes Moore in the primary. No other publication in the entire DMV endorsed Wes in the primary.
BFB: What are the pluses and also minuses of you carrying the legacy of your family and a family business. I would imagine that there’s a tremendous responsibility in that, in wanting to make sure the institution succeeds and that you can pass it on to future generations…in this difficult industry?
TD: It’s really humbling to think that a formerly enslaved person — that’s my great grandfather, who served in the Civil War, 52 years old, with 10 children and $200 from my great grandmother — had the audacity to start The Afro. People ask us all the time, because the proper name of the company is “Afro American Company of Baltimore City,” they said, “It doesn’t say Inc.” I said: “Well, it was formed before corporations were incorporated.” …They survived through so many things that we read about historically that we don’t have to do. And so laid the groundwork. We had to keep it going. So that is something that’s humbling and something to be proud of. Then flip that script on the other side…it is a challenge, not a struggle, but it’s a challenge for anybody. Businesses don’t stay in business that long, right? I’m fourth generation. Anytime you have legacy going your focus has to be on the next generation. But we have fifth generation very much involved in the company; we have six generations.
BFB: Is that your children or nieces and nephews and their children?
TD: Some of them are nieces and nephews. John Murphy and Martha Murphy had 10 children; five male children, five female children. For example, people ask me all the time, how is Billy Murphy related? He had the same great-grandparents. His grandfather was one of the five sons of of John H. Murphy senior. My grandfather was one of the five sons as well. So there are a lot of us. I’m in the Carl Murphy branch of the family. Carl Murphy just happened to be a longest-serving publisher of The Afro from 1922, when his father died, until 1957 when he died. So we’re always thinking succession. We’re always thinking legacy. The reality is, none of us is going to be there forever. I agreed to come back for a year, and that was in 2018.
BFB: What does the succession plan look like right now?
TD: We’re working on it. We never just went to the next generation just because our names were Murphy. We want and have people who are qualified, competent, interested, and we have family members who meet all of those criteria as well. And we’ve always had non-family members in key positions as well.
A New Home for Archives
BFB: If you look ahead 20 years, in what I assume will be after your tenure, what does The Afro look like then?
TD: Whatever the technology is, I predict that we’ll be right there doing that. I also predict that people will still have a need for information, right? How they get it is not going to be the same way as we’re getting it. And I do think that there’s a significant amount of the population that does not just want to be entertained. They want to be informed.
BFB: Toni, is it appropriate to think of an analogy where historically Black colleges and university become resurgent, or are on the upswing, and are not assimilated into other colleges and universities. Is there an analogy there with the Black press being resurgent and having its own voice?
TD: I think so. For 25 years, I was on Morgan’s board, and when I stepped off of that board to devote full-time attention to The Afro, Morgan wasn’t where it is now. That’s a big resurgence. But I think the Black press may not look the same way. For example, check out WordInBlack.com, a collaborative effort of 10 legendary Black publishers. …They’re mostly digital. But we came together and formed a digital startup for Word In Black. It’s actually a public benefit corporation. We incorporated it as of January and I serve as an inaugural chair of the board. We actually have a newsroom of 10. We’ve created a digital newsroom. So we are scrappy digital startup.
BFB: How is the legacy of The Afro going to be preserved?
TD: A 501C3 that’s affiliated with The Afro, Afro Charities, is developing what used to be a 10-acre plantation in the middle of Upton, the Upton Mansion. Groundbreaking is going to happen, we believe, in January…. But the really exciting thing about this project is that it’s going to be the permanent home for our 132-year-old archives, and our goal is to make the archives more accessible to the public. The Afro News, will be the anchor tenant in that building, and the archives will be there. We have 3 million photographs. Some things that were published, some things we’ve discovered, like a reel-to-reel recording we discovered a couple years ago. We sent it out to have it transcribed. And it is a conversation between my grandfather, Carl Murphy, and Thurgood Marshall about Brown v. Board of Education. We have original Booker T. Washington letters. We have a 1909 Booker T. Washington letter that talks about the need to teach Black history in the public schools of Baltimore. He called it Negro History 1909 and we’re still debating that in 2024.
So these are archives which people can search on the internet, or if you have a library card, and through ProQuest, you can see what was actually published. Somebody might take 100 pictures and only one gets into the publication. We have reporters’ notebooks. We have all the 99 pictures that didn’t get published. We’re excited because we work with young people to make new works out of those archives, and we’re doing all kinds of things with them.
BFB: What else are you working on?
TD: I have a book coming out. It’s called Prayer and a Pen. Carl Murphy wrote prayers a lot about what he was covering in The Afro. I found about 100 prayers, but there are 50 in this book. And coupled with each prayer is a blurb and some pictures about what may have been the impetus for the prayer. So, for example, he wrote a prayer before the March on Washington. He wrote a prayer after the March on Washington. So I researched the archives of The Afro to talk about how The Afro covered the March on Washington.
