Maurice Fitzgerald was looking through some old papers in his Prince George’s County home recently and came across a program celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Washington Informer.
“I looked at the program and saw pictures of Roy Lewis, Victor Holt and Khalid Naji-Allah, all great photographers of The Washington Informer,” said Fitzgerald, 70, a longtime freelance photographer for the District newspaper. “I said to myself, ‘This is really cool.’ The Washington Informer has come a long way and survived a lot.”
Founded by Dr. Calvin Rolark on October 16, 1964 as a weekly print newspaper, The Washington Informer is celebrating 60 years of publishing news across multiple platforms. Since its inception, the focus of The Informer has been providing positive news of the Black community, something that was often missing from other publications, whether white or Black owned, a point Rolark often stressed.
“The only time there would be anything it would be about robberies, murders, rapes. There would be nothing good about Blacks,” Rolark told The Washington Post in 1988, six years before his death. “They were highlighting the badness, the worst within Black people. I just wanted a paper that would not carry crime.”
Rolark used his resources and network to deliver important news, uplift African Americans and strengthen the District, nation and world.
“In this bi-racial city all citizens should develop awareness of the Negro’s rich heritage and his important role in making ours a great national capital,” Rolark wrote in the first edition of The Washington Informer. “It is our hope, through the pages of The Washington Informer, to bring about better understanding between different ethnic groups through valid and wholesome activities and programs to achieve these purposes.”
One of The Informer’s earliest columnists was former U.S. Rep. Wright Patman (D), a white Texas congressman who wrote weekly about national issues. A native of Texarkana, Texas, Rolark knew Patman through his father, who served as the congressman’s automobile mechanic.
While the paper’s founder was a businessman — as Rolark was a business major at Prairie View A&M in Prairie View, Texas — he founded The Informer in Washington, D.C. for a greater cause than entrepreneurship.
He started the paper in response to the political events in the city. He wanted to ensure that Black folks in D.C. had a vehicle to express their voices during the Home Rule struggle. There was also increasing violence between D.C. residents and the police,” said Denise Rolark Barnes, current publisher of The Washington Informer and Dr. Rolark’s daughter.
In addition to the weekly print edition, The Informer has grown to a multimedia outlet, delivering news through the website, newsletters, special editions, social media, WIN-TV, and its millennial publication WI Bridge.
Beyond news, the publication and Washington Informer Charities have served as a driving force for community gathering and engagement, with: the annual peace walk and parade honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the African American heritage tour every summer, and serving as the official sponsor of the Scripps Spelling Bee in the District and Prince George’s County, Maryland.
“With the activities that it supports, the Informer is dedicated to the Black community,” said Fitzgerald. “The Informer wants to make the community better. Publications like the Informer say that we are a great people and the community comes out to support each other. It is important that we get involved–and not just yell at the T.V.”
Dr. Rolark died on October 23, 1994, yet his legacy and mission continues. His daughter, Rolark Barnes, immediately became publisher and has been serving in that role for more than 30 years; and his wife, Wilhelmina Rolark, was president of the company before her death on February 14, 2006.
Rolark’s motto, “If it is to be it, it is up to me,” continues to serve as a guiding light for The Informer 60 years later.
While she’s been working with the paper since the beginning, as a little girl doing various jobs for the organization, Rolark Barnes doesn’t spend time counting the years. She works hard every day to keep the paper going strong, following news and shifts in media.
“I didn’t really think about how significant [60 years] might be, because we do have so many institutions in this country and all over, even in the Black Press, that are twice as old. But it’s significant because there were so many times when we didn’t think we were going to make it to the next year and we did,” said Rolark Barnes.
The publisher said she is now working to make it beyond March 28, when the company’s 60th anniversary gala takes place at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.
“There’s still some value in what we do, but the next 60 years, I don’t know, I’m going to have to rely on the next generation behind us and the generations behind them to determine where we go from here,” the longtime Informer publisher said. “People ask me, ‘Do we still print a newspaper?’ And I tell them, ‘Yes, we will continue to print The Washington Informer until we can’t. And that decision might not be ours. It may be something that’s happening environmentally… but people still like picking up and reading our publications.”
The Informer’s Importance, Legacy
Fitzgerald said The Informer reminds him of a Black newspaper published during the antebellum period in the United States.
“The Informer is like Frederick Douglass and the North Star, the newspaper he published that fought slavery and fought for the rights of Blacks,” he said. “We are part of that. We have to keep it going.”
Winston Chaney, a board operator who worked with Dr. Rolark on his weekly radio show on WYCB-AM 1340, highlighted The Informer’s legacy of reporting positive Black news, accomplishments and achievements over the 60 years and emphasized that it must continue.
“Rolark was brilliant, and he was one of the greatest minds of our time,” said Chaney, 70, who said Rolark’s show ran through the early 1980s until his death in 1994. “He always stressed to me the importance of getting an education. I was glad to call him a friend. I remember closing his show saying, ‘The only people who can save us is us.’”
Chaney, an on-air gospel personality on WHUR-FM, said he was fortunate to have worked with radio hosts like Rolark and Petey Green, a popular District personality known for his street humor and candor about the city’s people and its politics. He said The Informer has been around for decades because it “kept us informed on the issues.”
“The other newspapers, The [Washington] Post and The [Washington] Times, wrote about general issues, but The Informer brought light to what the Black community faced,” he said.
Virginia Ali is the co-founder of the Ben’s Chili Bowl restaurant chain, which is being honored by The Informer at the publication’s celebratory gala on March 28. Ben’s opened in 1958, a year before Dr. Rolark set up a public relations firm, CW Rolark & Associates, in the District after working a few years in Richmond, Virginia.
“I met Calvin and Wilhelmina Rolark in the 1960s,” said Ali, 90. “When he set up his newspaper, people were very excited. Black people had another choice when it came to news.”
Having co-founded Ben’s alongside her husband, the establishment’s namesake, Ali said the Rolarks were a prominent political couple in the city. She said The Informer is “a service to the community and a big asset to Washington, D.C.”
Ali said Ben’s Chili Bowl advertised when it could and helped the newspaper any way it could.
“Throughout the years, The Informer has written articles about us, and we appreciate that,” she said. “Those articles helped us keep our business alive.”
The longtime and celebrated entrepreneur said The Informer is part of a group of noted Black businesses that flourished during the 1960s, before the city became fully integrated.
“Black people had what we needed,” Ali explained, before noting some of The Informer’s 60th gala honorees. “We had Black newspapers like The Informer, Black banks like Industrial and businesses such as Lee’s Flower Shop and others that sustained the Black community.”
Other 60th anniversary gala honorees include Cheryl Lofton of the Lofton Tailors legacy, Adam Levin of Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland and D.C. educator Stefan Lockridge.
Ben’s Chili Bowl celebrated its 75th anniversary in August 2023. As The Informer celebrates its 60th year, Ali expressed confidence that the publication will reach that milestone and continue operating for years to come.
“I would tell The Informer to keep on going,” she said. “They are doing a great job. Denise is doing a great job. She has got it. Her dad taught her well.”
Reflecting on 60 years, Rolark Barnes emphasized that “every day is an achievement for us, because it’s an achievement for Black America.”
“We’re marching forward and we want to document every step of the way,” Rolark Barnes continued. “We just hope to be here with folks as we continue on today to climb that mountain.”