Florida Star

About Florida Star

The Florida Star is the weekly African-American newspaper of Jacksonville, Florida — founded on April 15, 1951, by Eric O. Simpson, and the oldest African-American newspaper in Northeast Florida. Created to give Jacksonville its own Black newspaper at a time when local media ignored or downplayed African-American and civil rights stories, it became one of the most significant forces championing civil rights in the city during the 1950s and 1960s. Owned and published from 2002 until her death in 2021 by trailblazer Clara McLaughlin — who added the sister publication The Georgia Star in 2005 — the broadsheet weekly continues to serve Jacksonville's Black community with a circulation of 21,000. Its websites are thefloridastar.com and thegeorgiastar.com.

Founding in 1951

The Florida Star was founded in 1951 by Eric O. Simpson, a veteran of national publications, to give Jacksonville its own African-American newspaper. The Star catered specifically to the city's Black community at a time when other local media ignored or downplayed African-American and civil rights stories. During the 1950s and 1960s it was one of the most significant forces championing civil rights in Jacksonville — pressuring the government to adopt reforms, endorsing Black political candidates, and keeping readers apprised of boycotts and sit-ins. In a segregated Southern city, the paper was both a news source and an organizing tool.

Civil rights crusades

The Star's civil rights-era journalism made it essential reading in Black Jacksonville. Its endorsements could move elections; its coverage of boycotts and sit-ins kept the movement informed and connected. The paper pressured city government for reforms at a time when the white dailies treated Black aspirations as marginal news. That advocacy came at a cost: in 1977, following telephone threats, the Star's headquarters on Myrtle Street suffered an arson attack that damaged the lobby. In 1993, a second arson attack destroyed the building and much of its archive. Simpson and his family refused to surrender, publishing that week's issue only one day late — a defiance that became part of the paper's legend.

Florida Star v. B.J.F.: a Supreme Court landmark

The Star's most nationally consequential moment came from its crime reporting. The paper had become known for sensational crime coverage, often with scandalous headlines printed in red. In 1983, a trainee reporter copied a police report that included a rape victim's name, and the Star inadvertently published it — violating the paper's own internal policy and Florida's rape shield law. The victim sued and was awarded $97,500 in damages, an amount greater than the paper's value. The Star appealed, and the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1989, in Florida Star v. B.J.F., the Court overturned the judgment, ruling that punishing a newspaper for reporting accurate, legally obtained material did not accord with the First Amendment. The decision remains a landmark of press-freedom law — and it was won by a small Black weekly in Jacksonville.

Clara McLaughlin's ownership

In 2002, Clara Jackson McLaughlin bought the Florida Star, becoming owner and publisher of the oldest African-American-owned newspaper in Northeast Florida. A native of Brunswick, Georgia, McLaughlin was a veteran of TV and radio who had already made history: after filing a petition with the FCC, she built and put on the air KLMG, a CBS-affiliated television station in Longview, Texas — becoming the first African-American woman in the United States to be founder, major owner and CEO of a network-affiliated television station. She also wrote the first book for Black parents on child care, The Black Parents Handbook. At the Star, she added a new publication, The Georgia Star, in 2005, hosted the weekly radio talk show IMPACT on WCGL-AM, and appeared for years on Jacksonville's PBS affiliate "Week in Review." She led the paper until her death on October 3, 2021, at age 81 — mourned, in Editor & Publisher's words, as a trailblazer for the Black community who had spent a lifetime in journalism.

Editorial character

The Star's editorial identity blends civil rights advocacy with the sensational crime reporting that made its red headlines famous. That combination — movement journalism and street-level crime coverage — gave the paper a distinctive voice in Jacksonville's media landscape: serious about power, uninhibited about scandal, and always centered on the Black community's experience. Its broadsheet pages carry local and national news, sports, opinion and community affairs for Northeast Florida's African-American readers.

Distribution and readership

The Florida Star is a weekly newspaper headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, with a reported circulation of 21,000. Its sister paper, The Georgia Star, extends the franchise across the state line. The papers serve the Black communities of Jacksonville and southeast Georgia — a continuous publishing run since 1951 that makes the Star one of the longest-lived Black weeklies in the South.

Surviving fire — twice

Few newspapers have been so literally tested. The 1977 arson damaged the Myrtle Street lobby; the 1993 arson destroyed the building and consumed much of the paper's archive — decades of Black Jacksonville history turned to ash. That the paper published only one day late after the second fire testifies to the Simpson family's commitment and to the staff's determination. The Star's survival of two arson attacks places it in the grim company of Black papers — from the Cincinnati Herald's firebombing to the presses destroyed across the South — that refused to be silenced by violence.

The Georgia Star and regional reach

Under Clara McLaughlin's ownership, the Star grew beyond Jacksonville. In 2005 she added The Georgia Star, a sister publication extending the paper's coverage to the Black communities of southeast Georgia — a natural expansion for a paper whose founder hailed from the region's Black press tradition and whose owner was herself a Brunswick, Georgia, native. Together, the Florida Star and Georgia Star give the company a two-state footprint unusual for an independent Black weekly, with the combined papers serving as the voice of Black Northeast Florida and southeast Georgia. The sister papers share the parent company's commitment to community-centered journalism: local news, civil rights advocacy and the celebration of Black achievement on both sides of the state line.

Legacy

Eric O. Simpson founded the Florida Star on a simple premise: Jacksonville's Black community deserved its own newspaper. Seventy-five years later, that premise still sustains it. The paper's presses have been firebombed, its finances strained, its founder long gone — but the Star endures, a weekly testament to the idea that a community that tells its own story can never be silenced.

For more than 70 years, the Florida Star has been Northeast Florida's Black newspaper: the civil rights crusader of the 1950s and 60s, the Supreme Court press-freedom landmark of 1989, the twice-firebombed survivor, and the institution Clara McLaughlin stewarded into the 21st century. Founded by Eric O. Simpson to give Jacksonville's Black community its own paper, it remains what he intended: Jacksonville's African-American voice, still publishing every week.

The paper's place in American journalism is secured twice over: once for its civil rights-era advocacy, which helped move a segregated city toward justice, and once for Florida Star v. B.J.F., the 1989 Supreme Court decision that protects every American newspaper's right to publish truthful, lawfully obtained information. Few papers of any size can claim to have changed both their city and the nation's press law. The Florida Star — founded in 1951, firebombed twice, victorious once before the highest court in the land — can claim both, and it is still on newsstands in Jacksonville every week.