FREEDOM’S JOURNAL, First Black Owned and Operated American Newspaper (1827-1829). Founded by Rev. Peter Williams, Jr., and other free blacks the year slavery was abolished in New York.
Above, Volume I, No. 39, New York, Dec. 7, 1827, the only issue of Freedom’s Journal privately owned.
To counter allegations that blacks could never “rise above the level of narration” by owning and publishing a newspaper, in their first issue the editors wrote the following:
“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly.”
Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm were co-owners and editors. Cornish resigned in 1827 when Russwurm became a proponent of the Colonization Movement, advocating that blacks quit the United States to resettle in West Africa. Russswurm shut down Freedom’s Journal in 1829 and moved to Liberia, but repatriated to start another American paper, The Rights of All, which failed within a year. Believing it impossible to end slavery in the U.S., Russwurm returned to Liberia in 1830 (as we shall see following this item).
Although there were only about 800 weekly subscribers, Freedom’s Journal set the standard for black-owned newspapers: it informed, educated, and entertained, advocated for universal suffrage and against lynching. Freedom’s Journal encouraged black achievement by featuring figures like Paul Cuffee, a free and wealthy trader whose seagoing vessels were also crewed by free blacks; Haiti’s liberator, Toussaint Louverture; and celebrated poet Phillis Wheatley.
By the time of the American Civil War there would be twenty-four newspapers owned and published exclusively by and for African Americans.