Once upon a time in Black Entrepreneur History, there lived and African American man named William C. Linton who was an editor and publisher, having founded The Chicago Whip newspaper in the year of 1919.
William C. Linton Life and Career
William C. Linton was born near Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a minister and presiding elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church named Reverend T. J. Linton. Linton studied on university level in both Atlanta, Georgia at Morris Brown University and in Syracuse University in New York.
In the year 1917 he went to Chicago, Illinois after resigning from the Officer’s Training Camp at Des Moines, Iowa due to what he termed a “Jim Crow officer’s commission in the United States Army. Right after arriving in Chicago, he became well-known in civic and political life, associating himself with Oscar DePriest the organization of The People’s Movement as well as R.W. Hunter in the Hunter banks.
Linton founded an independent newspaper that was considered at the time, “audacious and daring” which was the policy of the newspaper helping it to win nationwide recognition, becoming the leader of the “New Negro Movement which urged the awakening of racial consciousness”. Linton’s newspaper, called The Chicago Whip, provided editorial columns that drew immediate attention due to the manner in which it clearly and fearlessly diagnosed the problems of the day, locally and nationally.
At this point, William C. Linton was urged to run in the aldermanic election, and his opponents were intimidated, thus causing his disqualification on technicality of filing his petition.
William C. Linton Death
William C. Linton’s death came about when he was in Asheville, North Carolina in March of 1922 at the age of only 29 years old, while having been fighting illness for one year prior. He was survived by his wife, Emerald Linton, his father and his brother. He was remembered as the “newer school of newspaper making”.
Source:
- The Chicago Whip, Sat, Mar 25, 1922 ·Page 1
- The Kansas City Sun, Sat, Apr 01, 1922 ·Page 1
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