Establishment It was founded as the weekly
Atlanta World on August 5, 1928, by William Alexander Scott II who was only 26 at the time. Scott was a
Morehouse graduate who later worked as the only black clerk on the
Jacksonville to
Washington, D.C., rail line, then in 1927 published a Jacksonville business directory to help blacks find each other. A year later he published a similar directory for Atlanta. At the time, there was very little coverage of black educational institutions, businesses, prominent persons, churches, or other news of significance; the exceptions being crime news and death listings. This was despite the fact that Atlanta contained at the time the most prominent black educational institutions and persons of influence in the country. Whites lived to a large extent sealed off from black Atlanta and only interacted with blacks in service positions, virtually unaware of the black institutions and achievements taking place only a mile or two from their homes. The paper became a semi-weekly in May 1930, and a daily in 1931. In 1931, Scott also began publishing the
Chattanooga Tribune and
Memphis World, and by doing so, founded the first chain of black newspapers, a chain that would eventually grow, at its peak, to fifty publications.
Civil Rights Movement During the
Civil Rights Movement, the
Daily World was criticized for not supporting sit-ins staged at several white-owned restaurants in downtown Atlanta. ==Historic offices==