Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney KingSince the early nineteenth century, African Americans have turned to Black newspapers to monitor the mainstream media and to develop alternative interpretations of public events. Ronald Jacobs tells the stories of these newspapers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for the first time, comparing African American and mainstream media coverage of racial crises such as the Watts riot, the beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles uprisings and the O. J.