Named 2016’s Digital Collegiate Special Project of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists, The Black Voice is an online, safe space for the African diasporic students attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison and affiliated communities.

On Friday, February 5, 1971 volume 1, number 1 of THE BLACK VOICE was released to the University of Wisconsin Madison campus. The paper was a “new vehicle on which Black people can transmit their thoughts.” During a time of turmoil and overt rejection from the greater campus community, Black students created a place where their needs, conversations, interests, and community could be centralized beyond the realms of physical space. 

The last issue of THE BLACK VOICE was printed in August of 1973, after serving the community for little over two years. The Black Voice was recreated digitally 41 years after THE BLACK VOICE’s final print and have since tried to create a place where our students’ needs, conversations, interests, and community is centralized beyond the realms of physical space. While we recognize that there is no such thing as a singular proverbial Black voice even within the Black student body on campus, THE BLACK VOICE functions as a space in which you (and yo mama) can be soooo unapologetically Black that all manifestations and definitions of Black identity (not including “New Black” and “transracial”) are welcomed, acknowledged, and praised here.

“With THE BLACK VOICE, this new endeavor, let us all become determined to progress, let us all refuse to stagnate, and let us all refuse to retrogress. This is a long awaited beginning.”

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