Martin Robison Delany

Born free in what is now West Virginia in 1812, Martin Robison Delany became one of the most wide-ranging Black leaders of the 19th century. He worked as a newspaper editor and physician, wrote and spoke against slavery, and became known for his forceful belief that Black Americans should shape their own political and economic future.

Delany worked with Frederick Douglass on the abolitionist paper The North Star, but he also developed his own distinct voice—one that stressed Black pride, self-reliance, and, at times, emigration as a response to the deep racism of the United States. He is also remembered in literary history for Blake; or, The Huts of America, a pioneering novel that imagined resistance to slavery on a large scale.

During the Civil War, Delany served in the Union Army and became one of the first Black field-grade officers, earning the rank of major. He died in 1885, but his ideas continued to influence later generations of Black nationalists, reformers, and writers.