Our History

Florida's Statewide Black Voice

Why an African-American statewide newspaper?
To empower; to educate; to advocate.

Our history:

1969: Charles W. Cherry, Sr., a civil rights activist and later state president of the Florida NAACP, starts Daytona Beach’s Westside Rapper, a black weekly newspaper.

1978: The Westside Rapper is succeeded by the Daytona Times, the black weekly newspaper voice of East Central Florida, now in its 29th year of publication and read by some 50,000 readers weekly (circulation: 15,000).

1989: Cherry, Sr. starts the Florida Courier, targeting African-Americans living on Florida’s Treasure Coast, including Indian River and St. Lucie Counties (current circulation: 10,000).
Cherry, Sr. and sons Charles W. Cherry II and Dr. Glenn W. Cherry purchase WPUL-AM 1590, a Daytona Beach-area radio station, to be operated in conjunction with the Daytona Times.

2004: the Cherry family media business expands to become Tama Broadcasting, Inc., Florida’s largest privately owned African-American media group, with a total of eight FM stations and three AM stations located among the Tampa, FL, Jacksonville, FL, Daytona Beach, FL, Savannah, GA, and Greenville, SC radio markets.

2006: The Florida Courier launches as Florida's first African-American owned and operated statewide weekly newspaper. Our goals: to be distributed statewide to some 1.3 million black Floridians ages 18 and above, a multibillion-dollar consumer market virtually ignored by other media; to empower our readers; to educate them; and to advocate for them.