Missouri School of Journalism alum Claire Rounkles wins Blanchard Dissertation Prize
COLUMBIA, Mo. (June 11, 2026) — Claire Rounkles, BJ ’18, PhD ’25, has earned the coveted 2026 Margaret A. Blanchard Dissertation Prize from the American Journalism Historians Association.
Rounkles is the first Mizzou student to win the award, which recognizes her doctoral dissertation exploring how the Black press in the Midwest covered lynchings and the anti-lynching movement between 1890 and 1940. The work was completed under the guidance of Professor Earnest Perry, the associate dean for graduate studies and research at the Missouri School of Journalism.
“This is a major award in the field of journalism history, and Claire’s dissertation is more than deserving,” Perry said. “Her work gives us a stronger understanding of how Black journalists innovated while bringing the truth about racial violence in the Midwest to light.”
While much of the attention paid to historical lynchings has focused on the South, Rounkles examined 24 cases in which Midwestern Black newspapers covered lynchings in the South and the Midwest, where the Black press generally reported with more freedom and autonomy while still facing violence and threats.
“These were journalists doing the watchdog role, maintaining history, writing about people who were lynched for no reason other than that they were Black,” said Rounkles, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Memphis. “They did not accept justifications for lynchings; they looked at what actually happened, what the history was, how the person was treated. They called a spade a spade.”
In documenting how Black journalists covered these events, she found herself tracing the early development of many of journalism’s most important forms, from investigative and data reporting to photojournalism.
This went beyond recounting the famous work of Ida B. Wells to include lesser-known examples like the Cleveland Gazette’s investigative report on the 1894 lynching of Roscoe Parker in Adams County, Ohio. Parker was lynched by a mob of more than 100 people who hanged him twice before firing more than a dozen bullets into his body.
Three months later, the Gazette featured an in-depth profile of Parker and an account of the lynching, including an illustration showing Parker’s body.
In fact, the way the Black press of the era used images was an innovation unto itself.
“They were sort of flipping the use of photography on its head because back then, photographs of lynchings were used as souvenirs,” Rounkles said. “The Black press used them to bear witness. They would publish these photos to show their readers what was happening.”
Rounkles’ project had its origins in a master’s thesis she completed at Ohio University, in which she addressed a white journalist’s complacent involvement in that same lynching. In moving to a study of the Black press and its coverage, she found an opportunity to fill in some of the gaps in the historical record.
She has built what she calls a “research key” of more than 700 Black publications from each state in the Midwest, including information like the publication’s name, publisher, dates of publication and where their archives can be found. She also plans to include southern publications in the key, ultimately providing researchers with a valuable resource for studying the content and impact of historical Black news publications.
Rounkles will present her work during the Blanchard Dissertation Award Panel at the AJHA National Convention in Greenville, South Carolina, which will run from Nov. 5-7.
Updated: July 15, 2026