The Colored American
The most important African-American newspaper between 1839-1842 was the Colored
American, published from New York City at 9 Spruce Street but circulating in
free black communities up and down the northern seaboard. It was launched in 1836,
by Samuel Cornish, Philip Bell, and Charles Bennett Ray. The paper was a weekly,
running between four and six pages. Pronouncing its editorial mission as "the
moral, social and political elevation of the free colored people; and
the peaceful emancipation of the slaves," the Colored American gave prominent
coverage to abolitionist activity and to civil rights issues in the north. In the
presidential campaign of 1840, it declared in favor of Liberty Party candidate James
Birney, though the paper was not a partisan organ.
By 1839, Ray had taken over as the paper's sole owner and editor. Ray was an African-American
Massachusetts native who had briefly attended Wesleyan University, worked as a bootmaker
in New York City, and been ordained as a minister in 1837. He was a prominent figure
in the American Anti-Slavery Society, a "conductor" on the Underground
Railroad, and a member of New York's Vigilance Committee. He also supported missionary
and temperance causes, as well as educational programs within New York's African
American community.
Like other antebellum newspapers, the Colored American employed agents in
various cities to drum up subscribers. And it used abolitionist organizations to
market itself; in 1837 the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society
urged its members to support the paper, and at the organization's next annual meeting
lists circulated soliciting subscribers. Even so, the paper frequently teetered on
the brink of financial collapse. Its primary readership -- the northern free black
community -- was chronically hard-pressed for cash, though at several crisis points
determined fund drives raised critical donations from African-American churches and
local abolitionist societies. These efforts, supplemented by occasional cash infusions
from prominent white allies, enabled the paper to survive through 1841 (the last
issue was published on Christmas day), recording the voice of a small and scattered
but vitally active free African-American community.
Some of the key Colored American articles in the "Exploring Amistad" library include:
October 19, 1839: A depiction of Cinque, comparing him to Daniel Webster, "bred in the desert, among the lions..."
March 27, 1841: A short squib celebrating Cinque as a hero in the American Revolutionary tradition of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
May 22, 1841: A report on a large meeting staged in New York City to raise funds on the Africans' behalf, including elaborate demonstrations of the Africans' learning.
To see the entire collection of articles from the Colored American:
To track coverage along the twists and turns of the case, open the Amistad Timeline.
Sources:
James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997);
Donald M. Jacobs, ed., Antebellum Black Newspapers (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976).
Dolores Leffall, "Charles B[ennett] Ray," in Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1982);
Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
Back to the Newspaper Page
