The Colored Citizen was an African American newspaper founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1863. It was one of several black newspapers founded in Cincinnati during the nineteenth century, and it was one of only a few black papers in the country published during the American Civil War. The precise dates of its dissolution are not known. Only two surviving copies of the newspaper remain.
The African American population of Cincinnati was one of the largest in Ohio preceding the American Civil War. [1] There were several African American newspapers published in the city around this time, and ultimately around a dozen were published by 1900. [1] Two members of the city's black community were William H. Yancy (a barber) and Thomas Woodson (a reverend), both of whom were active in the establishment of black periodicals in the state, including the Palladium of Liberty and the Disfranchised American . [2]
In 1863, Yancy, Woodson, and others established the Colored Citizen, a weekly [3] African American newspaper, in Cincinnati. [2] It was one of the only African American newspapers published during the Civil War, [4] and only two surviving copies remain. [1] The available evidence suggests that the paper was focused on the life of African Americans serving during the Civil War and declared itself as the "Soldier's Organ". [1] The paper did not actively disclose its editing teams; the bylines were largely of groups, including the Cincinnati Young Men's Literary and Publishing Company, not individuals. [2] Among those who contributed to the paper were Joseph Carter Corbin (who may have published the paper), [5] Charles W. Bell, Harry F. Leonard, and George Washington Williams – all young writers. [2]
The paper was "utterly opposed" to the social movement that sought to repatriate formerly enslaved people to Africa, and it voiced dissatisfaction with economic contracts being drawn up for enslaved people following the Civil War (which provided wages as opposed to land). [6]
After experiencing financial difficulties, the paper closed in 1873, [7] though one scholar writes that it closed in 1869. [8] Whether it ever reopened is not clear; the local black community believed that the paper never reopened after its 1873 closure, but some scholars say that the paper was reopened by Leonard and Bell in 1887. [9]
Johns Hopkins was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained for most of his life.
Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates in the United Negro College Fund.
The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America until 1837, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the migration of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor".
Martin Robison Delany was an American abolitionist, journalist, physician, military officer and writer who was arguably the first proponent of black nationalism. Delany is credited with the Pan-African slogan of "Africa for Africans." Born as a free person of color in Charles Town, Virginia, now West Virginia, and raised in Chambersburg and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Delany trained as a physician's assistant. During the cholera epidemics of 1833 and 1854 in Pittsburgh, Delany treated patients, even though many doctors and residents fled the city out of fear of contamination. In this period, people did not know how the disease was transmitted.
John Mercer Langston was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician. He was the founding dean of the law school at Howard University and helped create the department. He was the first president of what is now Virginia State University, a historically black college. He was elected a U.S. Representative from Virginia and wrote From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol; Or, the First and Only Negro Representative in Congress From the Old Dominion.
Freedom's Journal was the first African American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. Founded by Rev. John Wilk and other free Black men in New York City, it was published weekly starting with the March 16, 1827 issue. Freedom's Journal was superseded in 1829 by The Rights of All, published between 1829 and 1830 by Samuel Cornish, the former senior editor of the Journal. The View covered it as part of Black History Month in 2021.
Lewis Woodson was an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist. He was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Woodson started and helped to build other institutions within the free African-American communities in Ohio and western Pennsylvania prior to the American Civil War.
Sarah Jane Woodson Early, born Sarah Jane Woodson, was an American educator, black nationalist, temperance activist and author. A graduate of Oberlin College, where she majored in classics, she was hired at Wilberforce University in 1858 as the first black woman college instructor, and also the first black American to teach at a historically black college or university (HBCU).
The Black Brigade of Cincinnati was a military unit of African-American soldiers, that was organized in 1862 during the American Civil War, when the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, was in danger of being attacked, by the Confederate Army. The members of the Cincinnati "Black Brigade" were among the first African Americans to be employed in the military defense of the Union. The fortifications—including forts, miles of military roads, miles of rifle pits, magazines, and hundreds of acres of cleared forests—at the border of Northern Kentucky thwarted the major threat to Cincinnati during the Civil War.
The pre-American Civil War practice of kidnapping into slavery in the United States occurred in both free and slave states, and both fugitive slaves and free negroes were transported to slave markets and sold, often multiple times. There were also rewards for the return of fugitives. Three types of kidnapping methods were employed: physical abduction, inveiglement of free blacks, and apprehension of fugitives. The enslavement, or re-enslavement, of free blacks occurred for 85 years, from 1780 to 1865.
The Colored American was an African American newspaper published in New York City from 1837 to 1842 by Samuel Cornish, Phillip Alexander Bell, and Charles Bennett Ray. When Cornish retired, James McCune Smith joined as co-editor.
African Americans, including former slaves, served in the American Civil War. The 186,097 black men who joined the Union Army included 7,122 officers and 178,975 enlisted soldiers. Approximately 20,000 black sailors served in the Union Navy and formed a large percentage of many ships' crews. Later in the war, many regiments were recruited and organized as the United States Colored Troops, which reinforced the Northern forces substantially during the conflict's last two years. Both Northern Free Negro and Southern runaway slaves joined the fight. Throughout the course of the war, black soldiers served in forty major battles and hundreds of more minor skirmishes; sixteen African Americans received the Medal of Honor.
The Cleveland Gazette was a weekly newspaper published in Cleveland from August 25, 1883, to May 20, 1945. It was an African American newspaper owned and edited by Harry Clay Smith, initially with a group of partners. Circulation was estimated between 5,000 and 18,000.
The Cincinnati riots of 1836 were caused by racial tensions at a time when African Americans, some of whom had escaped from slavery in the Southern United States, were competing with whites for jobs. The racial riots occurred in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States in April and July 1836 by a mob of whites against black residents. These were part of a pattern of violence at that time. A severe riot had occurred in 1829, led by ethnic Irish, and another riot against blacks broke out in 1841. After the Cincinnati riots of 1829, in which many African Americans lost their homes and property, a growing number of whites, such as the "Lane rebels" who withdrew from the Cincinnati Lane Seminary en masse in 1834 over the issue of abolition, became sympathetic to their plight. The anti-abolitionist rioters of 1836, worried about their jobs if they had to compete with more blacks, attacked both the blacks and white supporters.
The Colored Conventions Movement, or Black Conventions Movement, was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conventions consisted of both free and formerly enslaved African Americans, including religious leaders, businessmen, politicians, writers, publishers, editors, and abolitionists. The conventions provided "an organizational structure through which black men could maintain a distinct black leadership and pursue black abolitionist goals." Colored conventions occurred in thirty-one states across the United States and in Ontario, Canada. The movement involved more than five thousand delegates and tens of thousands of attendees.
Joseph Carter Corbin was a journalist and educator in the United States. Before the abolition of slavery, he was a journalist, teacher, and conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio and Kentucky. After the American Civil War, he moved to Arkansas where he served as superintendent of public schools from 1873 to 1874. He founded the predecessor of University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and was its first principal from 1875 until 1902. He ended his career in education spending a decade as principal of Merrill High School in Pine Bluff. He also taught in Missouri.
Peter Farley Fossett was an enslaved laborer at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation, who after he attained his freedom in the mid-1800s, settled in Cincinnati where he established himself as a minister and caterer. He was a captain in the Black Brigade of Cincinnati during the Civil War. Fossett was an activist for education and prison reform. He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. His remembrances, Once the slave of Thomas Jefferson, were published in 1898.
Everett J. Waring was the first African-American person admitted to the Maryland State Bar Association in 1885 and the Supreme Court Bench of Baltimore on October 10, 1885. He practiced before the Supreme Court of the United States and the Maryland State Appellate Court. He represented individuals involved in the Navassa Island riot of 1889, which occurred after African American men were lured to the island to gather guano to be used as fertilizer. The men were subject to inhumane treatment, low pay, and high cost of goods. He lost the Jones v. United States jurisdiction case and the men were found guilty.
Colored Citizen and The Colored Citizen were newspapers published for African Americans in the United States. Newspapers using the title were published in many cities including in 1867 in Vicksburg, Mississippi during the Reconstruction era, the state's first newspaper for African Americans. Many of the papers seem to have existed only briefly.