The Roanoke Tribune has adopted several slogans within my 54-year segment of its 86 years of continuous publication. Among them “One man with courage makes a majority,” “Because we love you, we care what you read,” and the current “Making and Recording Black History since 1939.” In between however there was a period when we used the biblical passage “…and the Voice of the Turtle is heard within our land” from which came the “Turtle Talk” editorials as frequent reference is made to past and present Holy Writings.
Originally we used the symbol of a snapper land turtle with the reference. Readers reminded us through the years that the biblical reference was to the turtledove instead. At that particular juncture of the Tribune’s various struggles for survival, however, the slow, tenacious snapper seemed more appropriate. But as we celebrate our 86th year of “making and recording Black History,” the voice of the turtledove is becoming clearer and more melodious.
Eighty-six years ago F. E. Alexander launched the Roanoke Tribune to serve a racially segregated society whose boundaries were clearly defined. At that period of time, the world was much younger, mankind moved at a much slower pace and technology was in its infancy. But through the quantum leap in science and technology over past years, today’s multi-segregated modern society is not so black and white but is easily camouflaged instead in multiethnic, socioeconomic and multicolor, selfishness, greed, insensitivity and contradiction on every level. (“Beware, O people, lest your words differ from your deeds,” we are constantly reminded in the Baha’i Holy Writings.)
The flames are fanned by the winds of modern media that instantly programs us to look, think, act and react in any given manner at any particular time. Yesterday’s drive to become educated and assume a responsible, respectable place in society has been replaced with “get rich quick” schemes through the lottery or increasingly popular TV game shows, etc., instilling and reinforcing an “easy come, easy go” attitude centered solely around the individual and a select small associated group. Subsequently, today’s print media (fast becoming a thing of the past) has to refocus in order to survive.
From the beginning of my assumption of proprietorship of The Roanoke Tribune in 1971, it was publically declared as, The paper with a purpose: To promote self-esteem; to encourage respect for self and the differences in others, and to be instrumental in establishing lasting vehicles through which diverse people can unite on some common voluntary basis. Today we proudly continue to fulfill that purpose.
Through the framework of this purpose The Roanoke Tribune also prides itself in consistently providing what we refer to as “thermostat media” as opposed to the more common “thermometer media” that simply registers the (mostly bad) climate about it, locally, nationally and internationally. Simply put our purpose is to make us feel good about ourselves and about others and to make those with whom we come in contact do the same. It’s a simple formula, in theory, for peaceful existence and cohabitation from immediate family to world scale.
This voluminous task is unattainable through mere knowledge alone. Here again we have had the
indescribable bounty of perpetual “basic training through a heavenly stream of Divine utterances” that constantly flower through the new Revelation of Baha’u’llah, which I ironically became introduced to within my first year of assuming responsibility of the press in 1972. It requires not just reading, but memorization of such tools as: “One must see in every human being only that which is worthy of praise.” This is one of the passages taught in children’s class at the earliest stage that remains applicable at any age.
Today the overall purpose of The Roanoke Tribune is to continue to weekly share such tiny drops of wisdom to assist in the imperative process or eradicating the egotism that prevents our becoming “instruments through which God’s love may flow to others.” Hopefully their thirst will eventually drive them directly to the Fountainhead where they can drink their fill of the refreshing, transforming waters for, in this day of contradictions and confusion, transformation of the world or of any organized segment of it is contingent upon transformation of the individuals who comprise it. Only through such spiritual transformation can “the voice of the turtle (dove) be heard throughout the land. Investigate!
