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.

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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.

She and Astrofsky combed through historical archives to trace how publishers and editors shaped political strategy and public opinion.

“Language was used by the press to dehumanize and to villainize groups” and incite violence, Astrofsky explains.

Forde says Astrofsky “was a true research partner,” noting that her work in primary sources uncovered key findings, including that Clarion editor Ethelbert Barksdale shifted his rhetoric depending on the audience, a strong indication, the scholars assert, of a coordinated political strategy.

The study reveals that Barksdale, a former slave owner and future member of Congress, played a central role in engineering the Mississippi Plan, with newspapers serving as tools to develop strategy, spread false information, attack political opponents and Black citizens, and coordinate paramilitary activity and racial violence, including massacres.

Astrofsky says the research points to broader lessons for today, illustrating that the way language and power are used in journalism can shape democratic or anti-democratic outcomes, and that political violence has deep roots in U.S. history rather than being a new phenomenon.

The study places these events in the context of the Reconstruction Era, when the federal government worked to reintegrate the former Confederate states following the Civil War and define the citizenship and political rights of millions of formerly enslaved African Americans.

But the research concludes that this democratic project was undone in part by the press, paving the way for changes to the Mississippi constitution in 1890 that would disenfranchise Black voters for generations to come.

Forde says the case punctuates the power of journalism itself.

“The press has been a profoundly good actor in service of protecting democracy, but it has also been a political actor in building authoritarian regimes through racial violence … and overthrowing actual state-level governments,” she notes.

For Astrofsky, the takeaway is equally clear: Understanding how journalism has been used in the past is essential to practicing it responsibly today.