Roscoe Dunjee
| Roscoe Dunjee | |
|---|---|
| Born | Roscoe Dunjee June 21, 1883 Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, United States |
| Died | March 1, 1965 United States |
| Occupation | journalist and civil rights activist |
| Period | 1883-1965 |
Roscoe Dunjee (1883–1965) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and editor. He had a prominent role is advancing racial integration in housing, university admission, fair jury selection, transportation, anti-lynching, education, and public accommodations
Dunjee was born June 21, 1883 in Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County, West Virginia. to Reverend John William and Lydia Ann Dunjee. His family later migrated to Oklahoma, in 1892. Dunjee's father was a minister with the Baptist Home Missionary Society. He had a brother, Irving, and three sisters, Ella, Drusilla, and Blanche. In 1903, he was notified of his father's death. He returned to Oklahoma city, where the responsibility for earning a living for his mother and a younger brother and sister fell on his shoulders. The family farm had been providing vegetables for the Dunjee, and young Roscoe decided to enlarge the operation and become a truck farmer, selling directly to the public. He decided to supplement the family income by becoming a bellhop at the Stewart Hotel in Oklahoma city, but he still wasn't satisfied with his life. Fascinated by black fraternalism, Dunjee joined the Pythian Grand Lodge and began lecturing in its behalf throughout the state. He also enlisted new members, and his reputation as an organizer grew. When Dunjee was traveling throughout Oklahoma it gave an opportunity to observe the conditions under which black migrant cotton patch workers and black tenant farmers were squeezing out bare livings. The problem was that no one was pointing out the poverty conditions under which these black families were living. Not only was the Negro unable to earn a living wage, he was being restricted in his travels and deprived of other rights and personal freedoms enjoyed by whites. Thus, Dunjee began thinking seriously about establishing a newspaper that could tell the Negro story and reply to white racism. Until he was 32 years of age, Dunjee raised and sold vegetables to earn a living. At this point, he saw an opportunity to purchase a job printing plant from Oliva J. Abby, an instructor in the Oklahoma City public schools, who was forced to give up the plant due to her husband’s illness. Prior to this time Dunjee had been writing for various newspapers in Oklahoma City and had thereby gained some experience in the field of journalism. He learned to set type eases during his tenure as a student at Langston University by working after hours in the print shop of The Langston Herald, a small paper published in the Langston community.
Dunjee completed his post-secondary education the historically black Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma. He founded his own newspaper, the Black Dispatch in 1915 which he used as a medium to fight against segregation and unfair treatment of blacks. The newspaper grew from a local publication to a national publication and at one point boasted nearly 20,000 subscribers. Dunjee would regularly report of the violent lynching's of unsuspecting black victims in Texas and Oklahoma.
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