Up until recently, their stories were obscured by the faults of truncation and omission in the pages of Truman J. Spencer’s History of Amateur Journalism (1944), not surprising since the posthumous publication of the history was spearheaded by the white North Carolina newspaperman Edward A. Oldham (1860-1948). As a young amateur, he wrote a racist editorial opposing the entry of African American amateurs into the National Amateur Press Association in 1879. Both Truman J. Spencer (1864-1944), a white Connecticut amateur and Oldham outlived many of these African American amateurs, and their high status within the amateur alumni organization The Fossils allowed them to decide who got included and excluded from the official history of amateur journalism.
Nonetheless, the following African Americans amateurs have been discovered to be active in the world of amateur publishing in the early days of Amateurdom in the 1870s-1880s. They hailed from Cincinnati, Detroit, Lawrence (Kansas), Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans: all centers for influential communities of color.