‘We have a real impact’: oldest Black college newspaper in US turns 100

Howard University’s the Hilltop chronicles one of the US’s most storied HBCUs and is helping a new generation of journalists navigate institutional racism

“Malcolm X, one of the most evasive and non-specific individuals I’ve ever met (with his objectives and radical plans he would have to be), is perhaps one of the most clever artists of appealing to the emotions that I’ve ever seen. Bayard Rustin was ‘not’ in my estimation a fair match for Mr X. (Dr Martin Luther King would have been.)”

So begins an account of a debate between the civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin that took place at Howard University in Washington. Along with a visit by the British anti-apartheid activist Trevor Huddleston, a student theatre production of Rashomon and an advert for Lucky Strike cigarettes, it is part of the mix in a 1961 issue of the Hilltop, the oldest Black collegiate newspaper in America.