''Star of Zion'' is the official publication of the A.M.E. Zion church. First published in 1876 it is among the oldest African American publications in

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

and the oldest continuously published.

History

For many years ''Star of Zion'' was published as a

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

. The site of its publication changed several times in its early years, but since 1894 it has been published in

Charlotte Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

. The paper had a Republican affiliation prior to

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

’s presidency in the 1930s. A publication called ''The Zion Church Advocate'' was planned initially but never printed. John Campbell Dancy and George W. Clinton served as business managers for the paper.

Editors and contributors

Editors have included Bishop William J. Walls (1920s), Walter R. Lovell (1960s), and Reverend M.B. Robinson (1970s). Sarah Dudley Pettey wrote articles for the paper.

Archived issues

The

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...

Libraries have many editions of the newspaper digitized and available online. The

American Theological Library Association The American Theological Library Association (Atla) is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), professional association, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Atla's member libraries and librarians provide resources for scholarly research to tens o ...

has a collection of the newspaper’s editions on

microfilm Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...

References

Website

Star of Zion website
1876 establishments in North Carolina African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church African-American newspapers Christian newspapers {{NorthCarolina-newspaper-stub