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Freedom's Journal
Freedom's Journal, published in New York City from 1827 to 1829, was the first African American newspaper in U.S. history. The newspaper employed sales agents from Washington, D.C., to Maine to build up a base of more than one thousand subscribers. The editors sought to advance a broad agenda of abolitionism, African American self-improvement, and cultural self-determination in an era that saw not only the virtual extinction of legal enslavement in the North but also increasingly virulent racism. A group of leading black New Yorkers encouraged Samuel Cornish, a Presbyterian minister, and John Brown Russwurm, one of the nation's first African American college graduates, to edit and publish the newspaper. The editors declared in the 16 March 1827 inaugural issue, “Too long have others spoken for us … it shall ever be our duty to vindicate our brethren, when oppressed,” opposing “daily slander” with “forcible arguments.” Freedom's Journal offered readers a mix of news, commentary, and literary fare, while simultaneously seeking to vindicate black freedom and to exhort African American readers to take advantage of the opportunities for self-improvement that freedom made possible. Heroes such as the shipping magnate Paul Cuffe and the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture were held up as exemplars of black achievement. Freedom's Journal also published critiques of American slavery and sought to blunt emerging racial theories of alleged black inferiority. In addition, the paper provided a forum for lecturing readers on the value of hard work and sober public conduct. Printing reports on the July 1827 celebration of the official end of slavery in New York State, Cornish and Russwurm indicated their concern that such events convey African American orderliness rather than exuberance. Freedom's Journal did not avoid controversy and, indeed, ultimately foundered on one of the most divisive challenges facing the North's free black communities: ongoing attempts by white philanthropists to promote the colonization in West Africa of free African Americans. Cornish's hostility toward African emigration aroused the ire of his church's white supporters. Cornish left his pulpit. He later relinquished his editorship as well. Stunningly, Russwurm converted to colonizationism, taking a position in the Liberian school system on behalf of the American Colonization Society. Russwurm's decision, standing in sharp contrast to that of most free black leaders, caused the demise of Freedom's Journal. Cornish then returned to journalism, founding the Rights of All, which enjoyed an even shorter run than its predecessor. Despite a brief and stormy history, Freedom's Journal marked an important milestone in northern free black life and political culture. The newspaper expressed the ambition of urban black communities in the North to assert their place in public life. The paper also indicated the determination of educated blacks to counter the hardening order of northern racism and fight against the expansion of southern slavery. Thus, Freedom's Journal was in the vanguard of the movement by nineteenth-century African Americans to tell their own stories in print, a vanguard that fostered the emergence of new, more radical abolitionism and helped sustain the movement against slavery during the pre–Civil War era.
Samuel E. Cornish (left) and John B. Russwurm, with mastheads of Freedom's Journal (14 March 1828) and The Colored American (13 May 1837). Freedom's Journal, published in New York City from 1827 to 1829, was the first African American newspaper. The Colored American was begun in 1836 by Cornish, Philip Bell, and Charles Bennett Ray.
New York Public Library, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Black Culture; Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
New York Public Library, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Black Culture; Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Bibliography
- Dann, Martin E., ed. The Black Press, 1827–1890. New York: Putnam, 1971. Places Freedom's Journal in its nineteenth-century context and offers several extended excerpts from the newspaper.
- Hodges, Graham Russell. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
- Wilson, Clint C. Black Journalists in Paradox: Historical Perspectives and Current Dilemmas. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. Offers a useful, albeit brief, overview of Freedom's Journal and its founding editors.
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