The Black Commentator was established to fill a crying, institutional need. Since the demise of EMERGE magazine, there had been no journal of “commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans” – our motto, coined in April, 2002.

Journalistic institutions need coins to survive, as EMERGE discovered in the mid-Nineties, and as did ENCORE magazine, in the previous decade. Corporations cannot be expected to place their ads in publications that regularly criticize corporate policies. Critics of establishment politics will find few friends in high places willing to direct revenues their way. Progressive publications and their readerships must depend on each other for support. This maxim is especially true for no-nonsense Black publications.

The advent of the Internet transformed publishing, bringing costs within reach of non-corporate folk – and making BC possible. But it still costs.  The serious business of informing the people must be taken seriously by the people, themselves.

BC will never remain silent in the face of the furious onslaught of organized political crime, mass incarceration and disenfranchisement, global destabilization and war. However, BC can be silenced by lack of operating funds.

There is much work to do, and we have great plans to build upon the influential base of support that we have been honored to garner over the past four years. Just as we are collectively locked in struggle with a fierce historical foe, we who fight the good fight are also bonded to each other. Every once and a while, those among us who can afford it must seal that bond with a monetary contribution. We are confident that you will make that contribution, because you find BC worthy to continue fighting for us all.