The Black Press in Antebellum America
Ronald L. F. Davis and B. J. Krekorian

It may surprise students of history to learn that as many as 40 black-owned and -edited newspapers were published in the United States before the American Civil War. Most of them were short-lived, and many of them left little record of their existence. In all but a few cases, the papers were independently owned. They appealed in most cases to a small but devoted readership in their local communities, although several had national and even international appeal. In just about every case, the black editors who printed and produced these papers were crusaders: men and women with a mission. They used their words and their printer's ink to wage war on the inequality and racism that raged all around them in a day when to be black was to be considered inferior and rightfully a slave by the vast majority of white Americans.

The antebellum black press targeted both the black reading population and the opinion of whites in the United States and the world. It published articles aimed at increasing pride in their race among blacks, uplift pieces designed to encourage black readers to pursue education and life-improvement schemes, and articles promoting civic responsibility among blacks. Some black newspapers offered advice on proper dress and personal decorum in efforts to counter the ongoing racial attacks on blacks as slothful, lazy, unclean, and ignorant. Most papers advocated temperance in drinking alcohol and moderation in all things. Topics such as astronomy, recreation, religion, economics, and literature filled the pages of these newspapers, making them more like magazines or journals than papers covering the daily news.

Almost all of these black papers presented a black perspective on current events. They did this in the belief that a black voice would help achieve a sense of racial identity for a people whose African ancestral culture had been demeaned and all but obliterated by the experience of slavery. They chronicled black achievements and printed stories of successful black intellectuals and businessmen and women. Most papers also tried to create a sense of unity by bonding together their literate readers and educated blacks both locally and nationally. Each of these crusading black editors and publishers understood the historical significance of what readers found in the pages they wrote and printed. They knew that it was not just the news they were reporting; they knew that they were making history.

The abolishment of slavery was uppermost in the minds of these black journalists and their supporters. Many of these papers focused on this issue almost exclusively, but their editors did not always agree on the means for achieving that goal. For example, the nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, founded in New York City on March 16, 1827, debated intensely within its own pages the issue of whether or not blacks should strive for integration in America or push for separation and even re-settlement in Africa. The intensity of the debate brought the paper down, with its founding editors, Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm, parting ways by 1829. Russwurm eventually left for Africa, where he published a newspaper called the Liberia Herald. Cornish started his own paper, The Rights of All, which advocated a more militant antislavery position in opposition to colonization.

The runaway slave and great anti-slavery advocate Frederick Douglass published the most influential black newspaper in the nation. His paper, the North Star, which ran from 1847 to 1851, supported abolitionism, civil rights for blacks, women's rights, and numerous other reforms such as temperance. This well-written and carefully edited paper reached an international audience. And, it established Douglass as the leading voice for immediate abolition of slavery by means of politics and even violence. Douglass' position contrasted with the stance of many white abolitionists, such as Lloyd Garrison, who rejected politics and violence in favoring of appealing to the conscience of slaveholders to end slavery. Douglass' paper continued until 1851, when it merged with the Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper, which openly endorsed political abolitionism.

One influential black newspaper, the Provincial Freeman, published in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, from 1853 to 1857, with a substantial readership in the United States, was edited and published by a woman, Mary Ann Shadd (Cary). A free black raised in Delaware and educated in a Quaker school, Shadd founded and taught in, a private school for black children in Wilmington, Delaware, from 1839 to 1850. Fearful of the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850, which threatened free blacks in the North with arrest and enslavement, Shadd moved with her family to Windsor in 1851 and published a well-received anti-slavery tract, Notes on Canada West (1852), promoting black immigration to Canada. However, Shadd quickly locked horns with Henry Bibb, a runaway slave and founder of the free black settlement at Windsor who advocated segregated black communities in his paper Voice of the Fugitive. To counter Bibb, Shadd began, with Samuel Ringgold Ward, the abolitionist Provincial Freeman, which supported integration. She argued that segregated black communities only perpetuated second-class citizenship for blacks in Canada and in the United States. Shadd, the first black woman editor of a newspaper in North America, returned to the United States in 1863 to help recruit black soldiers for the Union Army. After the war, she taught school in Washington, D.C., earned a law degree from Howard University, and became one of the first African-American women to practice law in the nation.

These antebellum black papers were published principally in the northern and midwestern states. A state-by-state breakdown shows that the most papers were published in New York, followed by Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Massachusetts. Two black papers were published in Texas and one in Alabama, but these were church-based papers and did not engage in political issues. Two other papers for American audiences were published in Canada.

The antebellum black press depended largely on the ability and energy of its black editors and publishers as well as white supporters and a few wealthy black patrons. Among these was James Forten, who had fought in the American Revolution and made money as a Philadelphia manufacturer of sails. On the eve of the Civil War, the black press had an established track record and could well acclaim a measure of success in reaching the goals articulated by Frederick Douglass: "...to attack slavery in all its forms and aspects; advocate Universal Emancipation; the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people; and to hasten the day of freedom to our three million enslaved fellow countrymen." That day came in 1865 with the ratification of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in the nation.

What follows is a listing of the most well known black-edited and black-owned newspapers published before the Civil War. Not much is known about many of these papers beyond their place of publication, duration, and editors. In many cases, there are no surviving copies.

Alienated American [1853-1854]
Cleveland, Ohio

A weekly newspaper edited by William Howard Day, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and J.W. C. Pennington, the Alienated American was based in Cleveland, Ohio, in the turbulent 1850s. The paper's objective, according to its editors, "was to aid the educational development of Colored Americans and to assist in the enforcing an appreciation of the benefit of trades and to aim at our Social Elevation." Its editors believed that reading good newspapers was an essential part of being a responsible American. They also saw themselves as appealing to readers beyond African Americans, advocating "equal justice before American Law...."

The paper supported integration over segregation and separatism, and declared itself "willing to stand or fall by ... the Constitution of our common country." Its principal editor Day was a graduate of Oberlin College, and the Alienated American functioned as the official newspaper of the Ohio Negro Convention Movement. He also used his newspaper to support the organization of black veterans of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, in which his father fought and died. Day moved to Canada in the late 1850s and actively supported John Brown's movement for the attack on Harpers Ferry in 1859, printing Brown's constitution by hand in Canada. He was in England raising funds for the fugitive slave settlement in Buxton, Ontario, when Brown was captured.

Anglo-African Magazine [1859-1865]
New York City, New York

Started in 1859 in New York City, the Anglo-African Magazine, published and edited by Thomas and Robert Hamilton, was a monthly, illustrated magazine that covered literature, science, history, art, poetry, and topics related to slavery through editorials, satirical essays, and poetic and comic verses. It was perhaps the most influential African-American journal in the immediate pre-Civil War era. It featured biographies of prominent African Americans and offered extensive coverage of issues related to slavery and abolitionism, such as the trial and execution of John Brown.

Still in publication during the Civil War, it sought to uplift its black readers and serve as a model of black culture in Manhattan. Hamilton, a fierce advocate for a fair and impartial picture of blacks in America, pledged to give a "thorough and impartial review" of the conditions of black New Yorkers, filling the void left by the established white press. His paper especially strived to promote the image of black heroes, such as Othello, to counter the ridiculous image of black minstrels and other black characters that had become a mainstay of white, popular culture.

The magazine featured the writings of leading black writers and abolitionists, such as Martin Shed Cary, Martin R. Delany, Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, John Mercer Langston, William Cooper Nell, Daniel Payne, J. W. C. Pennington, and James Theodore Holly. It printed in serial form Delany's novel, Blake, or, the Huts of America, one of the nation's first African-American novels. During the Civil War, the magazine covered the war and printed the letters of black soldiers to families at home. It named the radical abolitionist Henry Highland Garner as its editor of "the Southern Department." Although admired and respected, the magazine ceased publication in December in 1865, but not before urging black teachers to go south as educators for the formerly enslaved. While it operated, the magazine was known as "the black man's Atlantic Monthly."

The Christian Recorder [1852- current]
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Begun as a short-lived protest newspaper called The Mystery in Pittsburgh, it was renamed the Christian Herald in 1848 and it became the Christian Recorder in 1852, when it moved to Philadelphia. As the official journal of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, it is the oldest continuously published African-American newspaper in the nation. Among the more prominent editors of this weekly journal were several AME clergymen: Augustus R. Green (1848-18520; Molliston Madison Clark (1852-1854); and Jabez Pitts Campbell (1854-1858). In one of its most memorable quotes after the Civil War, The Christian Recorder said: "If a million Negroes move north and west in the next twelve-months, it will be one of the greatest things for the Negro since the Emancipation Proclamation." During the Civil War, the paper helped black soldiers keep in touch with their families by publishing letters and reporting on the location of church members in the army. After the Civil War, it published reports from AME clergy in the southern missions and assisted in reuniting black families torn apart by slavery.

The Colored American [1837-1842]
New York City, New York

A weekly newspaper published by Charles B. Ray and Philip A. Bell, The Colored American began as the Weekly Advocate. Although the paper was based in New York, it published a Philadelphia edition, making it possibly the first African-American publication to operate in more then one city. Determined to counter the image of black Americans as a "downtrodden people," the newspaper served as a model for black youth, inspiring them in its pages to strive for greatness--even the presidency of the United States. Commenting on social issues such as the dress of African-American women, The Colored American embodied a middle-class set of values, running articles that preached moderation and propriety in life. It cautioned, for example, in 1837, that women should not be overly fashionable and "ornamentive" in their style of clothes.

Scholars of the early black press note the quality and originality of the paper, which was adamant in its call for black unity and full citizenship rights for all. The paper opposed colonization in Africa but endorsed the idea of re-settlement in Canada. Its editor Charles B. Ray, a noted abolitionist, was memorialized by his daughter, the poet Henrietta Cordelia Ray, in the loving biography she wrote in 1887, Sketches of the Life of Rev. Charles E. Ray. An agent for the Underground Railroad in the 1850s, Ray's co-editor Bell, as the director of the New York Intelligence Office, helped escaped slaves flee to Canada. He moved to San Francisco in 1860 and worked tirelessly for equal and integrated education in the city's public schools, voting rights for blacks, and organized labor; he published several newspapers in support of these causes up to his death in 1889.

Douglass' Monthly [1858-1863]
Rochester, New York

The great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass brought out a monthly magazine, Douglass' Monthly, in 1858, aimed partly at England and at maintaining the support of British supporters--financial and otherwise--for the antislavery crusade in America. During the first years of the Civil War, the Monthly urged the emancipation of the enslaved and the British to break with the Confederacy. This newspaper editorialized against slavery, covered significant events like the raid on Harpers Ferry, and printed significant speeches of the day, including those by Abraham Lincoln. Alongside Douglass' own editorials appeared essays and commentary by leading black intellectuals. The publication came to an end in 1863 when its financial support dried up.

Frederick Douglass' Paper [1851-1860]
Rochester, New York

Officially started in 1851, Frederick Douglass' Paper became a weekly newspaper combining both the famed North Star and the Liberty Party Paper. Its motto, "Devoted to the Rights of All Mankind, Without Distinction of Color, Class or Crime," helped the paper grow until roughly 1856, when, financially strapped, it separated from the Liberty Party Paper. In 1860, the paper officially ended, and Douglass became editor of the Douglass Monthly, a paper that had occupied his journalistic attention from around 1858 to 1863.

Freedom's Journal [1827-1829]
New York City, New York

The nation's first African-American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, originated in New York City on March 16^th, 1827, in response to the continued and virulent attacks on blacks by the New York Enquirer, a white pro-slavery newspaper. Published by John B. Russwurm and Samuel Cornish, the weekly Freedom's Journal launched the movement for an independent voice promoting African-American cultural pride, perspectives on current events, and the exchange of ideas among black readers and black intellectuals. Its pages debated the issue of whether blacks should strive for full citizenship and assimilation in America--a view favored by most African Americans at the time--or pursue separation and even resettlement in Africa, a position, known as the colonization movement, held principally by whites. From its inception, Freedom strived to be non-partisan in its support for the major political parties while scrupulously responsible in its journalism. Its editors believed that a black press was the best means of providing for the "moral, religious, civic and literary improvement of the injured race" that was "daily slandered" in the nation's white press.

The paper's promising life was short-lived, however, because of the falling out of its editors over the issue of colonization. Cornish, a Presbyterian minister who organized the first African-Presbyterian congregation in New York after working as a licensed minister to slaves on Maryland's Easter Shore, vehemently opposed colonization. Russwurm, born in Jamaica and being the nation's second black college graduate (Bowdoin College), supported repatriation, or the settlement of American blacks in Africa. Soon their differences proved insurmountable.

Cornish left Freedom for six months to assume duties at his church, during which time Russwurm turned the paper into a staunch advocate of colonization, arguing that American blacks would never be accepted in America and that their only hope for dignity and true freedom was in leaving for Africa. He felt so strongly about colonization that he moved to Africa. On May 29, 1829, Cornish, resuming his editorial duties, changed the name of the paper to The Rights of All, a more militant paper, thoroughly opposed to colonization. The paper lasted less than a year, however, and Cornish thereafter concentrated on his ministry and advocacy of abolitionism and other reforms of the day, such as equal and integrated education in New York public schools. He became more militant in the 1840s and 1850s while also becoming more committed to integration, eventually breaking with all groups that supported black separatism. Russwurm, on the other hand, established in Africa the Liberian Herald in 1830, which he edited until 1835. He then became the first non-white governor of Maryland in Liberia, a colony founded by the Maryland State Colonization Society in 1834 at Cape Palmas, 200 miles south of Monrovia.

Impartial Citizen [1849-1856]
Syracuse, New York

Founded in February of 1849 by Samuel Ringgold Ward, a fugitive slave and staunch abolitionist, the Impartial Citizen, was "designed to aid in the elevation of the Free Colored People, and to support and urge the doctrines of a Righteous Civil Government...." Ward, who knew and admired Frederick Douglass as a fellow fugitive from slavery, considered the Impartial Citizen as somewhat of an auxiliary to Douglass' North Star. In preparation for the Citizen's move from a semi-monthly to a weekly paper in June of 1849, Ward advised his readers that the newspaper must have a minimum of 1500 paid subscribers at one dollar a year, a figure that he soon found too low to support the paper adequately. The usual edition of the paper included exchanges, a few ads, some verse, organization reports, texts of addresses, editorials, and letters to the editor. Ward was among the leading advocates of emigration schemes to Canada and the West Indies, and co-founded, with Mary Ann Shadd, the Provincial Freeman in 1853, a paper devoted to promoting Canada as a refuge for American blacks in the United States.

Mirror of Liberty [1839-1840]
New York City, New York

The first magazine-type publication edited and owned by blacks and aimed at black readers, the Mirror of Liberty was published sporadically in New York City by David Ruggles from 1838 to 1840. Modeled after the Freedom's Journal, the paper pledged to avoid in its pages "the greedy appetite of scandal and abuse," while "fearlessly attack[ing] vice and immorality, in high places and in low places." Ruggles, the son of free blacks, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, but lived for most of his life in New York City, where he ran a Temperance Society grocery, a printing business, a reading room, and a bookstore. He actively assisted fugitive slaves and stopped more than once the kidnapping of free blacks into slavery. Ruggles helped organize the New York Committee of Vigilance, which assisted more than 600 fugitive slaves; and his newspaper functioned as the Committee's official organ. It championed, among other issues, trials by jury for those blacks accused of being runaway slaves. Ruggles' ill health ended the Mirror's publication in 1840, but he continued his work in numerous contributions to anti-slavery journals and newspapers until his death in 1849.

Mirror of the Times [1857-1862]
San Francisco, California

Founded by two African-American businessmen, Mifflin W. Gibbs and James Townsend, the Mirror of the Times, appealed to a small community of African Americans in California as a weekly newspaper. Its first editor was the African-American writer William H. Newby. The only black newspaper in the Bay Area at the time, it gained national attention with its staff of over 30 corresponding editors and subscription agents. The driving force behind the newspaper was owner Gibbs, a free-born Philadelphian who went to California seeking gold in 1850. A devoted abolitionist, participant in the Underground Railroad, and friend of Frederick Douglass, whom he accompanied on a statewide tour of New York in 1849, Gibbs had little tolerance for the way blacks were treated in a new, so-called "free state." He used the Mirror to chide fellow blacks into confronting the restrictive "Black Laws" of California. In 1857, blacks from all over the nation attended the California Colored Convention in response to the publicity given it by the Mirror. Gibbs made a fortune in the clothing and dry goods trade, real estate speculation, and transportation, both in California and British Columbia, Canada. After the Civil War, he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he continued to prosper in business and politics into the 1880s.

The Mystery [1843-1848]
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Published by Martin R. Delany, The Mystery was the first black newspaper west of the Alleghenies. Published weekly in Pittsburgh, The Mystery was appreciated by blacks in Pennsylvania, but it never was financially solvent. It was purchased by the American Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1848, and moved to Philadelphia where it became known as The Christian Recorder. Its founder and editor Martin R. Delany was already known for his adventuresome ways when he set up the paper. Born in Charlestown, Virginia, to a slave father and a free black woman--which legally made him a free person--Delany was raised in Pittsburgh after being taken there by his mother in 1822. Over the next 20 years, Delany studied medicine with a white doctor, participated with numerous anti-slavery groups, traveled to Texas when Pennsylvania rescinded suffrage to blacks to see if it might be a suitable place for black settlement, and became a known speaker against slavery.

In 1847, Delany left The Mystery to work on the editorial staff of Frederick Douglass' new anti-slavery paper, the North Star. He remained there for less than two years, breaking with Douglass and becoming more pessimistic about the plight of blacks in America. For the remainder of his life, Delany championed black pride and the superiority of blacks over whites. He published a blistering anti-white novel, Blake, in 1859, which ran in the Anglo-African Magazine. During the Civil War, Delany recruited blacks for the Union Army and was commissioned a major with a field command in the 104^th United States Colored Troops. After the war, he served as a Freedmen's Bureau agent, a federal customs clerk, a justice of the peace in South Carolina, in civil service jobs in Washington D.C., and with various business firms in Boston. In 1879, Harper & Brothers published his Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color, a Biblically-based treatise asserting the essential and eternal differences between blacks and whites.

National Reformer [1838-Mid 1840s]
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Founded and edited by William Whipper, one of the wealthiest African Americans of his day, the National Reformer preached moral reform and a broad agenda not limited to the slavery issue. It was the official voice of the American Moral Reform Society (AMRS), an integrated group that Whipper helped to organize in 1835. The National Reformer, which sought the awakening of all Americans to the brotherhood of man, emphasized self-improvement, self-help, racial unity, and civic rights for blacks. It advocated racial integration, nonviolence, and the equality of women; and it urged black organizations to disband and merge with white groups.

It appeared 12 times a year in 16-page issues, circulating mostly on the eastern seaboard, with agents in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Its moral-uplift and integrationist message was not always received well by blacks interested in black pride and anti-slavery, and when the AMRS folded in the late 1830s, the paper ended publication. Whipper, who had prospered in the steam-cleaning laundry and lumber business, continued to be active in black organizations, eventually abandoning his early integrationist and anti-colonization opinions. After the Civil War he moved to Philadelphia and became an officer in the Freedmen's Savings Bank.

The North Star [1847-1851]
Rochester, New York

The most influential black newspaper published before the Civil War was the North Star, founded and edited by Frederick Douglass on funds raised in England. It took its name from the lodestar that runaway slaves used to guide them in traveling north to freedom. It began as an alternative to white abolitionist papers, principally William Lloyd Garrison's the Liberator, differing with Garrison over the use of political means and even violence to end of slavery. Printed weekly and presenting a staunchly antislavery stance, the paper nevertheless featured open dialogue about all aspects of abolition and civil rights for blacks.

In a pamphlet introducing the paper, Douglass presented his goals: "The object of The North Star will be to attack slavery in all its forms and aspects; advocate Universal Emancipation; exact the standard of public morality; promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people; and to hasten the day of freedom to our three million enslaved fellow countrymen." Surprisingly, white readers were also attracted to the paper, and its white subscribers outnumbered blacks almost five to one at its peak. While Douglass billed the North Star as an antislavery journal, it was not anti-white in sentiment. He said that his efforts "resulted from no unworthy distrust or ungrateful want of appreciation of the zeal, integrity, or ability of the noble band of white laborers." Eventually in 1851, The North Star merged with the Liberty Party Paper, renamed Frederick Douglass' Paper, which continued to be published until 1863.

Frederick Douglass was the most prominent black American in the nation in the 19^th century. Born a slave, he taught himself to read and write, organized secret schools for slaves, and escaped from slavery by masquerading as a free black sailor traveling via train and steamboat from Baltimore in 1838. Thereafter, he made hundreds of speeches for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, often risking his life. His autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, sold over 30,000 copies in the United States and Britain in five years. His notoriety forced him to flee to Britain, where he remained for almost two years before returning to publish the North Star. Douglass wrote most of the articles and essays in the paper, making it a model of editorial quality. By the mid-1850s, the break with Garrison's "moral suasionist" branch of the abolitionist movement was out in the open, and Garrison scathingly attacked Douglass' belief in using politics and perhaps violence to end slavery. Also active in the Underground Railroad, Douglass hid numerous fugitives in his house in Rochester. In 1852, his novella, The Heroic Slave, glorified a bloody slave revolt; and later in the decade, he participated in the planning for John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, secretly helping Brown raise funds in support of the plan. When Brown was captured, Douglass fled to Canada and then to England.

During the Civil War, Douglass pressured Lincoln to allow blacks to fight in the Union army, openly supported Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and worked feverishly to recruit black troops and to pressure the federal government to end discrimination in the military. After the war, Douglass championed the cause of black equality and lobbied for passage of the 15^th Amendment, breaking with long-time supporters who refused to back the Amendment because it did not include women's suffrage. Over the next 20 years, Douglass spoke out against the increasing violence in the Jim Crow South and the movement to disfranchise blacks. He also served during Reconstruction as president of the Freedman's Saving Bank, a federally chartered lending bank created to assist blacks in making the economic transition from slavery to freedom. In the post-Reconstruction era, Douglass continued to support the Republican Party and was rewarded with appointment as the U.S. Marshall for the District of Columbia (1877-1881), recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1881-1886), and U.S. Minister to Haiti (1889-1891). When asked shortly before his death in 1895 what advice he would give to a young black starting out in life, Douglass replied firmly: "Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!"

The Ram's Horn [1847-1850]
Williamsburgh, New York

The Ram's Horn was a weekly newspaper published and edited by Willis A. Hodges, a free black born in Virginia. His family moved to New York in the mid-1830s after Nat Turner's rebellion prompted the Virginia legislature to severely limit the liberties of free blacks, but they kept their family farm in Virginia. Active in school reform in Williamsburgh, the black community in which he settled, he owned a grocery store and attended the Abyssinian Baptist Church. By the 1840s, Hodges functioned as one of the most outspoken advocates for abolition and equal rights in the State. His abolitionist newspaper caught the eye of Frederic Douglass and John Brown, both of whom contributed articles and funds. Brown published his essay entitled "Sambo's Mistakes" in Hodges' paper, castigating northern blacks for not doing more to end slavery. Because of such essays as Brown's, the paper reached a peak circulation of 2,500. Hodges also argued in favor of re-settling free blacks and escaped slaves on farms in up-state New York rather than in cities. After the paper ceased publication, Hodges continued to support abolitionist causes, including Brown. It is not known if Hodges was part of the Harpers Ferry planning, but when Brown was arrested in 1859, Hodges burned their correspondence. The editor may have helped the U.S. army as a scout in Virginia during the Civil War, but the evidence is uncertain. After the war, he was active in Virginia politics during the Reconstruction era and, after the Democratic Party regained power in Virginia, returned to New York in 1876, where he lived until his death in 1890.

The Weekly Anglo-African [1859-1861]
New York, New York

Thomas Hamilton, the editor and publisher of the short-lived People's Press (1843), made his second attempt in the business with the monthly Anglo-African Magazine and with a weekly newspaper, the Weekly Anglo-African. This paper was a companion piece to the monthly, and featured shorter articles and news coverage. Often compared to the North Star because of the quality of its journalism, the paper dismissed the various schemes to settle blacks in separate states or in other countries. "Our cause," Hamilton said to his readers, "was to improve the lot of blacks in America." The paper, like the monthly, featured essays on astronomy, recreation, insurrection and rebellion, intemperance, and religion, as well as poetry and passages from books. Thomas Hamilton died in 1861, and the paper was sold to James Redpath, an advocate of the migration of blacks to Haiti. It ceased publication, however, within the year. (See also the Anglo-African Magazine.)

The Weekly Advocate [1837-1837]
New York City, New York

By taking over the reins of The Weekly Advocate in February 1837, Reverend Samuel Cornish once again attempted to edit a newspaper that would serve as a forum for the black point of view. The editor of the Advocate, as stated in its première issue on January 7, 1837, hoped to provide black readers with a newspaper that was clearly "their paper, in every sense of the word ... devoted particularly to our own interests--conducted by ourselves, devoted to our moral, mental and political improvement." It opposed slavery and colonization while supporting immediate rather than gradual emancipation, temperance, universal suffrage, and universal education. After publishing only nine issues, the name of the newspaper changed to The Colored American, beginning with the issue of March 4, 1837. (See also The Colored American.)

1. You will notice that often the black press was published by a small group of editors, men and women who failed and tried again and again. What do you make of this? Why do you think black papers had such a difficult time surviving?


2. One of the issues that separated black editors was colonization. Why do you think that some editors supported the settlement of American blacks in Africa, Canada, Haiti, or other places? Do you think this was a good idea?


3. Frederick Douglass was opposed to those abolitionists who supported something called "moral suasion" as the best means for ending slavery. What is moral suasion? How does it differ from using politics to end slavery? Why do you think white abolitionists might be more in favor of this approach than black abolitionists? Why did the white abolitionist John Brown reject both means to ending slavery?


4. Why do you think so many of the black papers were located in New York?


5. Several black-owned papers were located in Canadian black communities. What is the origin of these black settlements, and what do you think happened to them over time? Why would American readers be interested in these papers? Are the black communities still there, and, if the answer is yes, are they still predominantly black?


6. Some of the black editors were born in freedom, while others were escaped slaves. Do you think this mattered much in the way they functioned as journalists or in the nature of their newspapers?

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