Quick Facts
Biography
Cecil Newman (25 July 1903 – 1976) was an American civic leader and prominent businessman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was a member of the highly respected Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union that made major strides against segregation in the 1930s and 40s, before the modern Civil Rights movement.
He founded the Twin Cities Herald about 1927 and published the Timely Digest in 1932. In 1934 Newman became editor and publisher of the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder and in 1948 became the president of the Minneapolis Urban League.
After Nicollet Avenue South in Minneapolis was blocked by the Kmart at Lake Street, a one block long, one-way street was added in order to allow north bound traffic from 1st Avenue South to get over to Nicollet; it was named Cecil Newman Lane.
The now Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (formerly the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder), is the oldest continuously operated black newspaper & possibly longest-lived black-owned business.in Minnesota, In 1958 it moved to 3744 Fourth Avenue South. In 2015, the Spokesman-Recorder celebrated its eightieth anniversary and was designated a historic landmark.