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 Freedom's Journal was superseded in 1829 by The Rights of All, published between 1829 and 1830 by Samuel Cornish, the former senior editor of the Journal.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.
Background
The newspaper was founded by John Wilk, Peter Williams, Jr., and other leading free Blacks in New York City, including orator and abolitionist William Hamilton. The first publication, on March 16, 1827, advertised Freedom's Journal for $3 (~$ in ) per year, distributed each Friday at No. 5 Varick Street, New York City. At this time, journals became an important aspect of the African-American protest tradition, arguing for sociopolitical uplift within the community. The founders intended to appeal to free Blacks throughout the United States, who were desperately attempting to elevate their literacy rate and finding some success at that.
During this time, the free Black American population in the U.S was about 300,000. The largest population of free Black Americans after 1810 was in the slave state of Maryland, as slaves and free Blacks lived in the same communities. In New York State, a gradual emancipation law was passed in 1799, granting freedom to enslaved children born after July 4, 1799, after a period of indentured servitude into their 20s. In 1817 a new law was adopted, which quickened the emancipation process for virtually all who remained in slavery. The last slave was freed in 1827.
By this time, the United States and Great Britain had banned the African slave trade in 1808. But, slavery was expanding rapidly in the Deep South, because of the demand for labor to develop new cotton plantations there; a massive forced migration had been under way as a result of the domestic slave trade, as slaves were sold and taken overland or by sea from the Upper South to the new territories.
History
The newspaper founders selected Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm as senior and junior editors, respectively. Both men were community activists: Cornish was the first to establish an African-American Presbyterian church and Russwurm was a member of the Haytian Emigration Society. This group recruited and organized free Blacks to emigrate to Haiti after its slaves achieved independence in 1804. It was the second republic in the Western Hemisphere and the first free republic governed by Blacks.
According to the nineteenth-century African-American journalist, Irvine Garland Penn, Cornish and Russwurm's objective with Freedom's Journal was to oppose New York newspapers that attacked African-Americans and encouraged slavery. For example, Mordecai Noah wrote articles that degraded African-Americans; other editors also wrote articles that mocked Blacks and supported slavery. The New York economy was strongly intertwined with the South and slavery; in 1822 half of its exports were cotton shipments. Its upstate textile mills processed southern cotton.
The abolitionist press had focused its attention on opposing the paternalistic defense of slavery and the Southern culture's reliance on racist stereotypes. These typically portrayed slaves as children who needed the support of Whites to survive or who were ignorant and happy as slaves. The stereotypes depicted Blacks as inferior to Whites and a threat to society if free.
Cornish and Russwurm argued in their first issue: "Too long have others spoken for us, too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentations". They wanted the newspaper to strengthen the autonomy and common identity of African-Americans in society. "We deem it expedient to establish a paper", they remarked, "and bring into operation all the means with which out benevolent creator has endowed us, for the moral, religious, civil and literary improvement of our race".