Obituaries of Frances L. Murphy, publisher emeritus of the longest-running African-American family-owned newspaper in the United States, who died Nov. 21 at 85, have mentioned she earned a journalism degree at UW-Madison in 1944.
Murphy’s grandfather founded the paper, the Afro-American, in Baltimore in 1892; her father later served as publisher, and Frances â?? known as Frankie Lou â?? became publisher in 1971.
In a lengthy interview with the Washington Press Club Foundation in 1992, Murphy provided a sobering account of what it was like to be black in Madison in the early 1940s.