By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON,D.C., March 15, 2019 — In commemoration of Women’s History Month, Washington Informer Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes posted this remarkable photo of female staff members of the award-winning newspaper with the following caption, “Thank you Lafayette Barnes IV for capturing a team of dedicated and hard-working women who make up half of the team The Washington Informer. (Can’t forget the men!) I can’t do it alone, and I feel absolutely blessed to be on this path with these sister-friends and colleagues who believe in the Black Press. We thank our supporters for reading and following The Washington Informer for the past 54 years. Still going strong!”
It was an honour and privilege to have worked with The Washington Informer as News Editor for more than 12 years when I previously lived in Washington, D.C. for 21 years. Denise’s father, the late Dr. Calvin W. Rolark, Sr., hired me in 1982 when Denise, who had recently graduated from Howard University Law School, was studying for her Bar examination and could not devote as much time as she used to do helping to produce the Washington Informer weekly.
I had been working with the Institute for Services to Education (ISE) for five years before funding for this educational services organization ended when Ronald Ragan became President in 1981, and a friend who knew about my journalistic background in The Bahamas recommended me to Dr. Rolark, who at the time was President of the United Black Fund (UBF), a non-profit community-based organization committed to improving the lives of Blacks and impoverished people in the Washington DC area, but was also Publisher and Editor of The Informer.
As I note in an earlier article in BAHAMAS CHRONICLE on how The Bahamas became a participant in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Dr. Rolark, as Publisher and Editor of The Washington Informer, applied for and won the right for his weekly publication to take over sponsorship of the District-wide Spelling Bee during the 1981-82 school year after the then sponsor, The Washington Daily News, was sold and eventually closed, leaving the D.C. Spelling Bee without a sponsor.
Subsequently, I attended by first Scripps Spelling Bee in 1984 and was so impressed that I made up my mind that whenever I returned to The Bahamas to live, I would seek to have the Scripps Bee inculcated into our education system. I succeeded in doing this when I was Editor of the Nassau Guardian in 1997.
Because of my close ties to The Washington Informer, I have been advocating over the years that as one of the world’s leading tourist destinations, The Bahamas could benefit immensely from advertising in The Washington Informer, which is widely circulated in the Washington Metropolitan area – including suburban areas of Maryland and Virginia, where many African-American professionals and those who work for the Federal Government make the kind of income that allows them to be able afford to take an annual vacation to a foreign country.
I stressed this point on more than one occasion to then Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe in the former Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) government. Mr. Wilchcombe was one of the featured speakers when the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), which represents more than 200 Black-owned newspapers across the United States, held its mid-winter meetings in Nassau in 2015, and he made a solemn promise to the publishers that the NNPA would be included in the next tourism budget. Of course, Mr. Wilchcombe did not keep that promise.
Lately, I have made several appeals to the current decision-makers in the Ministry of Tourism on behalf of the Black Press, particularly the Washington Informer, because I extremely proud of the excellent product my “sister,” Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes, and her staff produce every Thursday.
Actually, that’s why I am so delighted “to shine a spotlight on the bold, beautiful Women of the Washington Informer, who are making positive contributions in the community and are making history before our very eyes,” as Publisher Rolark-Barnes noted.
