Black Love & Marriage According to The Advocate

By Fresh & Fried Hard Appalachia powered by Black By God: The West Virginian focuses on the foodways and lifestyle of Black West Virginians as well as neighboring Central Appalachia from a historical perspective.

West Virginia’s Black newspapers of old provided a slice of life for its readers. Publishing day was Thursday, and faithful readers couldn’t be happier to receive a copy of their favorite newspaper. After scanning the front page filled with national and international stories, they’d go straight to the sections that held their interest. And those sections were made interesting because they were all about the reader.  

The religion and social pages featured the names and faces of people they knew from school, church, lodges and the neighborhood. They saw their own names. The Advocate  had a “correspondence” section, where readers could send a sentence or two about their travels or out-of-town guests or hosting or illness and death announcements. But there was one type of announcement that was guaranteed to make tongues wag as well as solicit congratulations: the love announcements. Engagements and weddings were big news. 

Samuel Starks was the first African-American state librarian for West Virginia. In many ways, The Advocate under Stark’s direction was much like an archive with his attention to the social lives of readers. While the newspaper only survived 12 years, it is an excellent guidepost for understanding Black West Virginia and her people in the early 1900s. 

Since February is the month of love and Blackness, it is only fitting to time travel to bygone eras of Black West Virginia to sample news from The Advocate about engagements and weddings in news print. The few examples below are largely about people near Huntington. Maybe you’ll see the names of your people. [Most of the images may be blurry due to the condition of the newspaper at the time of photographing for microfilm.]

As you can tell, The Advocate covered all of the love news fit to print, including secret marriages, license applications, and fancy display announcements. It is a valuable source of information about love and marriage in West Virginia’s Black communities. 

If you are a family history enthusiast, then you can read archived copies of The Advocate on the Library of Congress’s website.