The Carolina Tribune Archive 

The Carolina Tribune of Raleigh, North Carolina, published its first issue in 1927 and featured local, state, and national news for African Americans. Claude Ernest Whitaker (1893-1969), who owned a printing company, served as the newspaper's publisher and editor.

In 1933, Hugo Isadore Fontellio-Nanton (1909-1991) bought Whitaker's printing company and assumed editorship of the Tribune. The newspaper continued serving African American readers and featured stories on such topics as the organization of a "Black Klan" to oppose the Ku Klux Klan in 1935 and a federal anti-lynching bill filibustered by North Carolina senators in 1938. The Tribune also included a "Schools and Colleges" section, which showcased black schools and colleges in and around Raleigh. In 1936, the Tribune had a circulation of about 3,000, according to the March 1, 1936 issue of the Raleigh News & Observer.

In 1940 Fontellio-Nanton sold the Tribune to Paul Reginald Jervay Sr. (1906-1993), a native of Wilmington, N.C. Jervay was a veteran of several African American-owned newspapers, including The Cape Fear Journal, which his father founded in 1927 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Jervay changed the Tribune's name to The Carolinian in 1941, and the newspaper continues to publish under that title.

Fontellio-Nanton turned his attention to higher education, teaching journalism, and serving as an administrator at such schools as St. Augustine's College in Raleigh and Hampton University in Virginia.