When Bella Astrofsky, who’s poised to graduate in May with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, began digging through 19th century newspapers, she did not expect to help inform how historians understand the end of Reconstruction in the United States.
As co-author of a recently published peer-reviewed study—an uncommon role for an undergraduate—Astrofsky helped document how newspapers in the Reconstruction-era South went beyond expressing partisan views to actively inciting violence to support Democratic efforts to seize power.
The study, published in Journalism History by Astrofsky and Kathy Roberts Forde, professor of journalism, examines how the Jackson Clarion and other newspapers helped devise the Mississippi Plan of 1875 and the violent overthrow of the state’s Reconstruction government.
“This is the first detailed historical study of the active role white newspapers associated with the Democratic Party played in overthrowing the Reconstruction-era biracial democratic government in Mississippi through mass racial violence and electoral fraud—and then building a racial authoritarian regime at the state level,” Forde says.
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