Something Positive: BHM100: Celebrating “Freedom’s Journal,” the 1st Black-Owned Newspaper in the U.S. | A Sign of Progress

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Sick and tired of having to constantly read racist commentary in the mainstream press of the United States, free Black Americans Rev. Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm started their own paper – Freedom’s Journal.

First published on March 16, 1827 in New York City — the same year New York State abolished slavery – the four-page weekly was the first Black-owned newspaper of record in the United States. At its zenith, Freedom’s Journal circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada.

Would you like to read more good news about African-American Firsts, Black Newspapers, John B Russwurm, History, Samuel E Cornish, and Politics?

In addition to covering general news and current events, Freedom’s Journal included editorials denouncing slavery, lynchings and challenged the racist attacks against Black people that appeared in other newspapers.

The paper also contained articles advocating for voting rights, repatriation of Blacks to Africa, covered international news, celebrated Black achievements, offered biographies of prominent African Americans and published vital record listings of births, deaths and marriages in the African-American New York community.

Although Freedom’s Journal folded in 1829, shortly before Russwurm emigrated to Liberia, its two-year existence helped spawn at least 40 similar papers over the next four decades and kicked off the long standing, time-honored tradition of the Black Press in America.

To learn more about Freedom’s Journal, you can check out the digitized archive of all 103 issues of the paper on wisconsinhistory.org, as well as other sources linked above and below.

Sources:

• https://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/newbios/nwsppr/freedom/freedom.html
• https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83030455/
• https://maap.columbia.edu/place/29.html
• https://americanantiquarian.org/earlyamericannewsmedia/items/show/93
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/3559045
• https://www.nyhistory.org/web/africanfreeschool/bios/samuel-cornish.html
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Freedoms-Journal#ref1200859
• https://maap.columbia.edu/place/29.html
• https://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/subject-guides/africana-resources/john-brown-russwurm/index.shtml
• https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.79.252