Black Magazines As a Mirror to 1960-1970s American History A Statistical Approach Kushal K Dey1, Lei Sun1 and Lauren M. Jackson2 1 Department of Statistics, 2 Department of English

Word frequency analysis Word pair associations Timeline We apply word2vec on yearly text data, which learns vector embeddings for words and then computes cosine of angle between the embedded Relative frequencies of (black) vectors for a word pair to determine their association score - the higher and (negro) related words show the score, the more similar are the words contextually an identity shift towards the dr. king vs assassination trend plot dr. king vs assassination trend plot 0.8 end of civil rights movement 0.5 (martin luther king) 0.6 0.4

vs 0.3 Assassination of 0.4 Moon 1st Cuban missile Assassination of Dr. King and Watergate landing Negro Digest / Black World Ebony (assassination) 0.2 Earth 0.2 crisis John F. Kennedy score association

Robert Kennedy scandal score association Day 0.1

0.0 Trend in association 0.0 1964 1968 1972 1976 Upon removing black and negro related words terms 1964 1968 1972 1976 year score across time year Clustering of texts (K=2) from each of the 2 magazines using their yearly data on frequencies Ebony Negro Digest / Black of the different words in the vocabulary (topic models). R package : CountClust World 1976 1975 1974 1973 1970 1971 1972 1965 1967 1962 1964 1963 1968 1961 1966 1969 Black, negro identity influencing associations Ebony Negro Digest / Black World

Civil rights movement Ebony_1976 BL_1976 theater, watergate, Association trend in Ebony between word opportunities and Ebony_1975 black_panther, BL_1975 broadside,

Black panther party, Ebony_1974 panthers, BL_1974 black_panther liberation BL_1973 poetry Ebony_1973 literature BL_1972 Ebony_1972 sonnet BL_1971 drama Ebony_1971 BL_1970 Ebony_1970 Vietnam war ND_1970 Ebony_1969 Clusters Clusters 1 (black, negro (black) (negro) ND_1969 1 Ebony_1968 2 2 De-identified) ND_1968 Years of Publication of Years Ebony_1967 Years of Publication of Years ND_1967 Anti war movement Ebony_1966 ND_1966 Other words showing similar trends (both Ebony and ND/BW) : Ebony_1965 ND_1965 education, economy, progress, leaders, rights, employment, jobs Ebony_1964 ND_1964 civil rights, civil rights, Ebony_1963 ND_1963 race, segregation, Ebony_1962 Opposite trend in Ebony between music and ND_1962 segregation, righters Ebony_1961 Magazines ND_1961 agitator discrimination 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 Negro Digest (changed to Black World in 1970, circulation stopped in 1976)

civil rights discrimination race civil rights race occurrence prop. occurrence occurrence prop. occurrence

occurrence prop. occurrence (black, negro (black)

3e-04 6e-04 (negro) 0e+00 2e-04 occurrence prop. occurrence occurrence prop. occurrence 0e+00 4e-04 8e-04 2e-04 8e-04 3e-04 6e-04 BL_1970 BL_1971 BL_1972 BL_1973 BL_1974 BL_1975 BL_1976 BL_1970 BL_1971 BL_1972 BL_1973 BL_1974 BL_1975 BL_1976 ND_1961 ND_1962 ND_1963 ND_1964 ND_1965 ND_1966 ND_1967 ND_1968 ND_1969 ND_1970 ND_1961 ND_1962 ND_1963 ND_1964 ND_1965 ND_1966 ND_1967 ND_1968 ND_1969 ND_1970 BL_1970 BL_1971 BL_1972 BL_1973 BL_1974 BL_1975 BL_1976

ND_1961 ND_1962 ND_1963 ND_1964 ND_1965 ND_1966 ND_1967 ND_1968 ND_1969 ND_1970 De-identified) drama black panther literature Ebony_1961 Ebony_1962 Ebony_1963 Ebony_1964 Ebony_1965 Ebony_1966 Ebony_1967 Ebony_1968 Ebony_1969 Ebony_1970 Ebony_1971 Ebony_1972 Ebony_1973 Ebony_1974 Ebony_1975 Ebony_1976 black pantherEbony_1961 Ebony_1962 Ebony_1963 Ebony_1964 Ebony_1965 Ebony_1966 Ebony_1967 Ebony_1968 Ebony_1969 Ebony_1970 Ebony_1971 Ebony_1972 Ebony_1973 Ebony_1974 Ebony_1975 Ebony_1976 Other words showing downward trends in association word black/blacks : 0.0005 0.0015 occurrence prop. occurrence occurrence prop. occurrence occurrence prop. occurrence 0.00000 0.00015 0.0000 0.0020 songs, sing, plays, glory, beautiful, muslims, islam occurrence prop. occurrence BL_1970 BL_1971 BL_1972 BL_1973 BL_1974 BL_1975 BL_1976 ND_1961 ND_1962 ND_1963 ND_1964 ND_1965 ND_1966 ND_1967 ND_1968 ND_1969 ND_1970 BL_1970 BL_1971 BL_1972 BL_1973 BL_1974 BL_1975 BL_1976 ND_1961 ND_1962 ND_1963 ND_1964 ND_1965 ND_1966 ND_1967 ND_1968 ND_1969 ND_1970 BL_1970 BL_1971 BL_1972 BL_1973 BL_1974 BL_1975 BL_1976 0.00000 0.00008 Ebony ND_1961 ND_1962 ND_1963 ND_1964 ND_1965 ND_1966 ND_1967 ND_1968 ND_1969 ND_1970 Ebony_1961 Ebony_1962 Ebony_1963 Ebony_1964 Ebony_1965 Ebony_1966 Ebony_1967 Ebony_1968 Ebony_1969 Ebony_1970 Ebony_1971 Ebony_1972 Ebony_1973 Ebony_1974 Ebony_1975 Ebony_1976

Clustering K=2 of yearly texts from Ebony and Black World/ Consistent word pair associations Negro Digest taken together reveal biases in sports related Coach narrative in Ebony and arts related narrative in Negro Drama Word pairs with consistent high association score: team Poetry across all years Basketball Digest/Black World, speciallyYears of Publication in later years of circulation.

Ebony_1961 Ebony_1962 Ebony_1963 Ebony_1964 Ebony_1965 Ebony_1966 Ebony_1967 Ebony_1968 Ebony_1969 Ebony_1970 Ebony_1971 Ebony_1972 Ebony_1973 Ebony_1974 Ebony_1975 Ebony_1976 Literature Baseball (race, relations), (jazz, music), (racial, discrimination) ND_1961 ND_1962 ND_1963 ND_1964 ND_1965 ND_1966 ND_1967 ND_1968 ND_1969 ND_1970 BL_1970 BL_1971 BL_1972 BL_1973 BL_1974 BL_1975 BL_1976 Arts football Consistent pre 1968: music (struggle, oppression), (creed, race), (racism, oppression) . . 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Consistent post 1968 : (education, school), (health, care), (black, community), (mental, health) Workflow Role of the Research Computing Center . 1 0.8 - This project marked the first time partnership between the Graduate Arts + Sciences Collaboration Grant team and the Research Computing Center facilitating computational efficiency.

Clusters - A special allocation was made in Midway cluster to submit jobs related to the project, with a total of 20,000 service units

2 1 (SUs) for running computational jobs and a space of 500 GB allocated to store the pdf and extracted text files for all magazine issues over the 16 years of study, together with model output. Negro Digest/ Black World Statistical and Machine Ebony Interpretation of results - RCC Midway nodes were used for parallel processing of the text files and word2vec model fit on the yearly magazine texts. Magazine texts (yearly) Learning tools to analyze the and linking to known Text (extensive computing Acknowledgements history Increasing time Increasing time We thank Peter Carbonetto and Igor Yakushin for extending much needed support to this project. We thank Prof. Michael Dawson, Prof. Peter McCullagh and Prof. Matthew using RCC resources) Stephens for critiquing our work. We also thank the Graduate Arts + Sciences Collaboration team headed by Naomi Blumberg, Julie Marie Lemon and Dwayne Moser.