Today in history: January 24, 1885 - Martin Delaney dies at age 72. Delaney was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, and one of the first proponents of American Black nationalism. In 1850 he was one of the first three Black people admitted to Harvard Medical School, but was quickly driven out by white student pressure. He treated patients during the cholera epidemics of 1833 and 1854 in Pittsburgh, when many doctors and residents fled the city. Along with Frederick Douglass, he founded the Black abolitionist newspaper The North Star. His serialized novel Blake: Or The Huts of America, which advocated black activism and rebellion, was the first novel published by a Black man in the U.S.
In 1859-1860, Delaney went to Liberia to investigate the possibility of a mass migration of Black Americans back to Africa, and organized toward that. But when the Civil War started, Delaney decided to stay in the U.S. to fight for emancipation of slaves in the U.S. In 1863 he started recruiting Black people for the Union Army. He met with and convinced President Lincoln in 1865 to form a corps of black men led by black officers; near the end of the war he became the first African-American field officer in the U.S. Army and achieved the rank of major, the highest rank any African American reached during the Civil War. During Reconstruction Delaney worked with the Freedman’s Bureau in Hilton Head; he shocked white officers with his strong call for the right of freed Black people to own land. Later in the context of the reversal of Reconstruction he returned to the idea of a mass migration of African-Americans to Liberia.
Via Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back!)