Meet the Bay Area publisher who has spent her career elevating Black voices
Amelia Ashley-Ward heads up San Francisco’s oldest Black newspaper and has spent her life’s work raising up other Black, female voices—including her close friend and VP Kamala Harris.
Amelia Ashley-Ward, the publisher of San Francisco’s oldest Black newspaper, the Sun-Reporter, at their office in the Fillmore District. Photographed by Jen Siska.
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After Kamala Harris gave the speech of her life on Nov. 7 — declaring victory in the election and cementing herself as the first African American, first South Asian and first woman to be elected vice president — one of her good friends back in San Francisco sent her a text.
Sitting on her sofa, Amelia Ashley-Ward had just finished watching Harris thank the women who came before her, saying, “I stand on their shoulders.” She was crying as she texted Harris: “Phenomenal! I love you so much. So very proud!” (Because even vice president-elects have friends who send “I’m proud of you” texts — the kind that normal people get when they do something like, say, get a raise at work.)
Ashley-Ward assumed she wouldn’t hear back anytime soon, but 15 minutes later, while every major news channel was still running footage of the celebration, her phone buzzed. “Thank you honey. Love you very much,” it read.
“I was just shocked, because she must have been with her family, her husband and (President-elect Biden), but she hit me right back and thanked me and told me she loved me,” said Ashley-Ward, the 63-year-old publisher of San Francisco’s oldest Black newspaper, the Sun-Reporter. “I was just blown away.”
Outside of the Black community and political activist circles in San Francisco, Ashley-Ward is a relative unknown. But inside the Black community, she’s a minor celebrity whose newspaper has significant influence over the lives of its readers, including who they vote for.
Amelia Ashley-Ward. Photographed by Jen Siska.
The Sun-Reporter was founded in 1944 and has been publishing weekly ever since. The paper costs 30 cents an issue, and readers can find it at Bay Area newsstands and inside local Black churches and businesses, or, for $20 annually, get it delivered to their homes. “We are a trusted voice in the community when it comes to political campaigns and elections,” said Ashley-Ward. “People call and they wait for our recommendation to see what they must do.” The paper is trusted because it covers issues that its readers actually care about, readers who have historically been neglected by the mainstream press.
“The Sun-Reporter is an example of the significance of the Black press in America,” Harris said at a 2019 event celebrating the paper’s 75th anniversary. “There are issues that are unique to the Black community, and until we have true diversity in the press we must rely on papers like the Sun-Reporter.”
“We are able to plead the cause for people who normally would not have a voice in the daily papers,” Ashley-Ward said. “We don’t want others speaking for us.” The paper helps Black residents “with the decisions that they need to govern their lives: their health, their wealth, their education, their transportation,” she added, and it has an underlying mission to “keep knocking down the walls of injustice and racism.”
“We are able to plead the cause for people who normally would not have a voice in the daily papers. We don’t want others speaking for us.”
It’s an invaluable resource for the Black community in San Francisco — especially in a post-Trump presidency world. “We thought we had made gains until Trump was elected and you had all this violence and racism and hatred and police brutality,” said Ashley-Ward. “It’s like, what in the world? These people were sitting back, they had this inside of them, they just didn’t let it out until they felt comfortable and they got a license from somebody in the White House to do so. So we have a lot of work to do again on race relations and bringing people back together.”
Photographed by Jen Siska.
Ashley-Ward has been at the newspaper her entire professional career — it is her life’s work. She studied journalism and photojournalism at San Jose State University and started at the paper as an intern in 1978. When she graduated, she accepted an entry-level reporter position where she made $140 a week. “I heard that he was quite tight with money,” she said of her former boss, Dr. Carlton Goodlett, the iconic co-founder of the paper and an influential African American civil rights leader. “But I liked being there, I was happy there, I was comfortable there. I was brought up to believe that once you’ve been trained, you are obligated to bring something back to the community.”
“We thought we had made gains until Trump was elected and you had all this violence and racism and hatred and police brutality. It’s like, what in the world? These people were sitting back, they had this inside of them, they just didn’t let it out until they felt comfortable and they got a license from somebody in the White House to do so. So we have a lot of work to do again on race relations and bringing people back together.”
Ashley-Ward wrote stories about Maya Angelou, Anita Hill and Rosa Parks, and she started winning journalism awards. When the printing press broke down, she’d leave her house in the middle of the night to take the paper to another printer and make sure it got out on time. She got promotion after promotion, and in 1997 when Goodlett’s health declined, she became the Sun-Reporter’s editor and publisher.
“I put in a lot of time to keep that paper going. It had to be me,” she said. That’s a phrase she’s also used about Harris. “It had to be you … I love you, Madame Vice President,” she texted her friend the Friday before the election was called. Harris promptly texted back: “We’ve been on this journey together for a long time. Thank you sister Amelia. Love you.”
Over 40 years after Ashley-Ward accepted her internship from Goodlett, she’s kept the paper going. Goodlett “was a child psychologist and a medical doctor and the first publisher to get the Black press into the White House,” said Ashley-Ward, who named her only child after her former boss. “He was an amazing, brilliant man. So I didn’t try to walk in his footsteps; I tried, as they say, to put on my own pumps and walk my own walk.”
That walk includes what you might call activist-journalism: raising the voices of Black women and helping them get into positions of power. “We’ve had our legacies (at the paper), but mine has to be the two women that I helped,” said Ashley-Ward. One of those women is San Francisco Mayor London Breed, whom she championed despite controversy. (“I lost friends, I lost political leaders, I lost probably some revenue,” Ashley-Ward said of her support for Breed.) But the person she’s supported the longest is now the vice president.
Harris and Ashley-Ward met about 20 years ago at a women’s conference. “She was a new assistant D.A. and so I wanted to meet her and she wanted to meet me,” said Ashley-Ward. At the time, Ashley-Ward was good friends with then-District Attorney Terence Hallinan, whom the paper had supported for years. But that friendship came to an end when Harris decided to run for district attorney in San Francisco and Ashley-Ward threw her support behind her.
“It kind of put me in the middle of a little mess,” said Ashley-Ward. “I had to break from the Hallinan tradition and my friendship with the Hallinans to wrap my arms around this young, talented African American woman, who people told, ‘It’s not your turn, you wait your turn.’”
At the Sun-Reporter anniversary celebration, Harris remembered how the paper’s publisher stood up for her. “But one voice spoke loudly and said, ‘I know it is your time, and I will have your back,’” Harris said. “And that was Amelia Ashley-Ward.”
Ashley-Ward believed so much in the young candidate that when Harris called her feeling discouraged, Ashley-Ward joined her in campaigning.
“She called me one day when it had gotten really bad. She said, ‘Amelia, I’m not gonna win.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s see about that. You can win.’ So I got a cable car for about three or four hours. I put other African American leaders on that cable car; Kamala got on, and we drove all across the city,” Ashley-Ward said. “She won that election big time.”
What began as a networking relationship quickly blossomed into something much deeper: They championed each other’s career achievements as Harris became attorney general and then senator, they met each other’s friends and family, supported each other through the deaths of their mothers and joined each other for girlfriend lunches, Warriors games and concerts in Oakland.
Ashley-Ward shows off her camera roll—filled with plenty of pics of her good friend Vice President Kamala Harris. Photographed by Jen Siska.
“We hit it off because she’s just a down-to-earth sister. She laughs easily. She would join me for concerts with Beyoncé. She’d be the first one to throw up her hands, shake her body and say, ‘hey!’” said Ashley-Ward. “It was easy to become friends with her. I loved her mother. I was able to spend time with her mom and her sister, Maya. It’s just a great family. We just became friends. We like a lot of the same things.”
Ashley-Ward also appreciated Harris’ candid relationship advice.
“I had this boyfriend that she didn’t really approve of and she would say, ‘He’s so not worthy of you,’” said Ashley-Ward, laughing. “She’s just a nurturer. She could only do it to a good friend because I know how to take it.”
“At the end of the day, when they preach my eulogy, they’ll say I really did it my way, but more importantly I was able to bring about change, and I put my selfishness aside and I helped to uplift other brilliant, young Black women who wanted to be in the political world to help other people,”
Now, over two decades later, they’re both at turning points in their careers: Harris is in the White House and Ashley-Ward is at a crossroads for the paper, which has survived despite having to compete in the swiftly evolving internet age with minimal online presence. But despite the struggles of running a local newspaper, she said, she has no interest in leaving the industry to join her good friend in Washington, D.C.
“Oh, I’m 63 now. I know I don’t look 63, but I’m 63 now,” said Ashley-Ward, chuckling. “I’m not seeking anything — although I do think she will be president one day. I will always be supportive of her and I don’t need to have a job to do it.”
For now, her focus is on keeping the newspaper alive and fighting injustice through the written word.
“At the end of the day, when they preach my eulogy, they’ll say I really did it my way, but more importantly I was able to bring about change, and I put my selfishness aside and I helped to uplift other brilliant, young Black women who wanted to be in the political world to help other people,” Ashley-Ward said.
Now, she’s focused on the next generation. Kamala “is going to join with President Biden to help heal this country,” she said. “And I’m going to sit back and see if I can bring along some help and wrap my arms around other young women and use my paper to tell their stories and to keep them out there so that people will know who they are when they run for office.”
In other words, she’s looking for the next Kamala Harris.