Though it was a powerful newspaper, it suffered financial difficulties due to the conviction of McCray on libel and parole-related charges, and it declared bankruptcy and dissolved in 1954.
[4] The first issue of the Lighthouse and Informer was released on December 7, 1941, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service.
[8] It decried black Southerners who undermined the civil rights work the NAACP performed, either through inaction (the "I Dunnits") or through active subversion (the "I Killits").
[18] McCray, writing in the paper, argued in support of the ongoing legal case of Briggs v. Elliott; he wrote that the government "will never do justice to the Negro until and unless it is beaten over the head with a federal court blackjack".
[22] In 1954, a short time before the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that a bipartite racially-segregated school system was unconstitutional, McCray left the paper to work at the Baltimore Afro-American.
[23] The paper was experiencing financial difficulties – some readers were not paying for their subscriptions and McCray had extensive debt following his 1952 prison term – leading to it declaring bankruptcy in 1954.
[27] He argues that the paper was one of the most significant black newspapers in the state at the time, and its focus on racial inequalities – a subject the Palmetto Leader rarely discussed in detail – was highly effective.