The Nubian Message, NC State’s African-American community newspaper, celebrated its 25th anniversary on Thursday and published its anniversary edition Wednesday. A celebration was held Thursday evening in the African American Cultural Center.
Technician reported earlier this week on the upcoming anniversary. The Nubian Message was founded in 1992 by Tony Williamson, who served as the paper’s first editor-in-chief. Williamson established the paper in response to what he said was “unfair and unjust coverage of the African American community on NC State’s campus,” which included an offensive and inflammatory Technician opinion column harshly criticizing calls for an African-American cultural center at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“The event that spurred it was a column in Technician, a contingent of the African-American community said they had had enough and they took some of that issue of Technician to the Brickyard and burned it,” said Stan Martin, an NC State student media adviser in 1992 and now senior director of Office of Information Technology Outreach. “And Tony Williamson stepped forward and said he was going to be a person of action and create a newspaper to better represent the views of the African-American community.”
Members of the inaugural Nubian Message staff recalled the difficulties they encountered getting the paper off the ground.
“We had to go through a lot to get our first edition made,” said Gary Bussey, a 1996 NC State graduate in African-American studies who served as the history editor on the first edition of Nubian Message. “We actually had to go off campus to get the printing done and things of that nature so there was a lot of obstacles to overcome but we had a great team of young students and we did whatever we could to support the mission.”
Despite these early obstacles, which included having to travel to NC Central University to print the first edition of the paper, The Nubian Message reached 25 years with support from current students.
“It is good to know the Nubian has been around 25 years because it has been a great organization on this campus,” said Jason Day, a fourth-year studying statistics and math. “I read the Nubian, it has great stories, topics that are very important particularly within the black community that need to be talked about that maybe we don’t get to see in other papers on campus.”
The current Nubian Message staff expressed excitement at the event and a sense of pride in their heritage as a paper.
“I am super happy, really excited, honored to be part of the staff, honored to continue the legacy that Tony Williamson left behind at NC State,” said Anahzsa Jones, a fourth-year studying English and the current editor-in-chief of The Nubian Message. “Tony literally started The Nubian Message out of his pocket and he had a vision for what it was and it’s a vision we go back to pretty often.”
Preparations for the anniversary became a learning experience in their own right for the current generation of Nubian Message staffers.
“We’re very excited, this is a big thing for us,” said Keilah Davis, a third-year studying physics and the current managing editor of the Nubian Message. “It’s something that we’ve been looking forward to all semester. In preparation for this, we did a lot of going through our own archives and talking to students who were here when the Nubian was founded and we got a lot of information that we didn’t have before.”
The celebration was catered by the Cary branch of Dame’s Chicken and Waffles, a Durham based, African-American-owned restaurant.
“[We] suggested it would be good to have a black-owned business cater the event, and Dame’s is a good one,” Davis said.
Attendees enjoy food catered by Dame's Chicken & Waffles at the Nubian Message's 25th anniversary celebration at the African American Cultural Center Thursday, Nov. 30.
