Roscoe Dunjee

Born in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, Roscoe Dunjee (1883-1965), came to Oklahoma just before his 9th birthday. Although he only had a formal education until 8th grade, Dunjee was a voracious reader, and an eloquent and prolific writer. As a young man he attended classes at Langston University and worked in the print shop of the Langston Herald in Langston, Oklahoma, and began writing stories for the Oklahoma Gazette as early as 1904. In 1913 Dunjee purchased a printing plant. The first edition of his newspaper, The Black Dispatch, was published November 5, 1914.

Eventually the Black Dispatch had a readership of over 24,000. As a newspaper publisher, Roscoe Dunjee often used his paper as a vehicle to encourage people to organize and to fight for civil rights. Dungee advocated for things like voting rights during the time of Jim Crow, and desegregation of schools, public transportation, and other public spaces. Throughout his many fights for legal rights for African Americans he also raised legal funds for a number of court cases. Some of these cases were heard by the Supreme Court. One such case resulted in the ruling that African Americans couldn’t be excluded from juries, while another determined that Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher could attend the University of Oklahoma’s law school. He retired from the newspaper business at the age of 70 and passed away in 1965 at the age of 81. Roscoe Dunjee is buried in Fairlawn Cemetery.