March 16 marks the 197th anniversary of the founding of the first Black-owned newspaper in the United States, Freedom’s Journal.
During the 1820s, free Blacks in New York City and elsewhere were beginning to form a literate community large enough to support a newspaper. As it happened, during the very year that Frederick Douglass started to learn to read, the first newspaper in America owned by Blacks was founded. Freedom’s Journal began publishing on March 16, 1827 in New York City.
The founding editors were Reverend Samuel Cornish, a minister, and John Russwurm, an alumnus of Bowdoin College, who was the first black person to graduate from an American college.
In their first number, the editors boldly stated their goal:
“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”
Not surprisingly, Freedom’s Journal was editorially opposed to slavery, and it published the first account of a lynching ever printed in the United States. At the same time, it served its largely Black readership by running newsy items of general interest, as well as sermons, poetry and advertisements.
The newspaper did not survive long, but it was followed by many others, notably Frederick Douglass’s first newspaper, The North Star, which he founded in 1847.
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