William "Bill" Blair Jr. used to drive his children around his south Dallas neighborhood, pointing to people on the street, providing running commentary on their names, occupations, families and churches.
Blair, founder and publisher of The Elite News, an iconic weekly African-American newspaper, wanted the next generation to know the stories of the community."We always got a visual history lesson, riding along with him," said his son Darryl Blair, who is now the News' editor-in-chief.Blair, 90, donated his extensive collection of personal papers and memorabilia to the University of Texas at Arlington Library's Special Collections Tuesday at a celebratory signing ceremony.It is an important gift for the university's new Center for African American Studies, officials said.When the Blair family sent inquiries to a number of schools about the collection, UT Arlington responded immediately."We were interested in doing it -- we just had to sell ourselves," said Marvin Dulaney, chairman of UT Arlington's history department, who met Blair in 1984. "We explained we wanted to work with him and how the collection would fit into UTA's plans."The collection is massive and still in transit."We've got about half of everything," Dulaney said. "We've got two or three more trips to go through it all."The collection includes Blair's personal papers, the records of the newspaper, programs of all the Martin Luther King Jr. parades the paper has sponsored, reunions of black high schools, items relating to the paper's Pastors Hall of Fame, even collections about early black officeholders in Dallas and Dallas County.Blair, a former Negro league pitcher, started a weekly newspaper called the Southwest Sports News in 1949 to print the scores of African-American college games around the country, information ignored by the white-run media. Seeing a need for wider coverage of the community, he changed the paper's name and mission in 1960 to The Elite News, printing "Black News for Black People."Now, even his grandchildren work on the paper and its website; some have started other publications of their own. "We all grew up with ink in our blood," Darryl Blair said.Bill Blair spoke briefly at the signing ceremony."The spoken word is like the air, the printed word is always there," he said, repeating the Elite News motto.Blair still writes a column, "Founding Thoughts."The Blairs have always pronounced the paper's name e-light "because it is the light of the world, here in our community," said Debra Blair Abron, Bill Blair's daughter and the Elite's current publisher."I feel we're bridging the gap between the past and the future with this gift," Abron said. "I always knew something of this magnitude would come. And through it all, Dad has kept the faith."Shirley Jinkins, 817-390-7657Twitter: @startelegramHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
