Tony Langston was best known as "a tastemaker," an unusually insightful and persuasive African American arts critic who could tip "his readers off to a new wave of emerging Black talent" while also effectively arguing against racist tropes. As entertainment editor for the ''

Chicago Defender ''The Chicago Defender'' is a Chicago-based online African-American newspaper. It was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind. Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim ...

'', the city's largest Black newspaper, Langston wrote on theater, film and music, reviewing everything from the rare talent of

Bessie Smith Bessie Smith (April 15, 1892 – September 26, 1937) was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Empress of the Blues" and formerly Queen of the Blues, she was t ...

to the outrageous racism of Birth of a Nation for as many as a million weekly readers. Writing largely from the late teens to the mid-1920s, Langston's work was wide-ranging, and inherently political when, for example, he expressed disgust with Ebony Film Corporation's debased depictions of African Americans and encouraged Chicago theater owners to ban the company's films. In a 1920 ''Competitor'' magazine article, he joined the conversation about propriety, discussing both film codes and censorship boards, while also corresponding with George Johnson of the Lincoln Film Company. In 1921, fellow culture writer WiIliam Henry Harrison, Jr. said, “Tony Langston is without question the most popular Colored theatrical writer not only in America but throughout the world ... nd thehighest paid writer in the history of Colored journalism.”

Career

After leaving the Chicago Defender alongside several other writers amid false accusations of embezzlement, Langston spent a year or so at the

Chicago Bee ''The Chicago Bee'' or ''Chicago Sunday Bee'' was a Chicago-based weekly newspaper founded by Anthony Overton, an African American, in 1925. Its readership was primarily African American and the paper was committed to covering "wholesome and auth ...

, only to leave his post there in 1926, to head the sales team at "Baby Calculator." Langston, also a former actor, went on to become part owner of several theaters, and run his own agency, the Langston Slide and Advertising Co., in Chicago’s thriving Black neighborhood of Bronzeville. The Detroit-born critic came of age during the silent Black film-making period, and like fellow critic

Lester Walton Lester Aglar Walton (April 20, 1882 – October 16, 1965) was a St. Louis-born Harlem Renaissance polymath and intellectual, a well-known figure in his day, who advanced civil rights in significant and prescient ways in journalism, entertainme ...

transitioned into writing about "talkies."

External links

African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)

The Black Film Critics Circle

History of Black Theater in America

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Langston, Tony American writers 20th-century American writers 20th-century African-American writers African-American journalists 20th-century American journalists American film critics American theater critics American music critics Journalists from Michigan Journalists from Chicago

Career

See also

External links

References