"A cultural stronghold": The Anglo-African newspaper and the black community of New York

New York History

Volumn 85, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 331-357

  Jackson, Debra ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61249334027     PISSN: 0146437X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. The Rev. Loguen to the Weekly Anglo-African (hereafter cited as WA-A), August 31, 1861. Loguen fled bondage in Tennessee and was, like Frederick Douglass, a self-taught, gifted orator
2. Other correspondents, WA-A, August 17, 1861. As far as we know there are no extant copies of the Anglo-African after December 23, 1865, and scholars have declared the paper defunct after that date. The evidence appears, it seems to me, inconclusive at best given the following letter from Robert Hamilton: ". . . No paper has been issued from this office since the 23d of December. I was taken sick on Christmas day, and having no person connected with me in business, I was compelled to suspend the publication. I am slowly recovering and hope to be about next week when the publication will be resumed." Robert Hamilton to John L. Sibley, January 31, 1866, Houghton Library, Harvard University
3. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York to 1898 (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 854-56
4. on voting in New York and the State Constitutional Convention of 1821 see Aaron Hamlet Payne, "The Negro in New York Prior to 1860," The Howard Review (June, 1923), p. 35
5. Edward Pessen, "Who Has Power in the Democratic Capitalistic Community? Reflections on Antebellum New York City," New York History (April, 1977), p. 1
6. John Mercer Langston was one black man in antebellum America that did hold elective office in Brownhelm, Ohio, in 1855 and later in Oberlin; see Langston, From Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol (orig. pub. Hartford, 1894
7. reprint Bergman Publishers, New York, 1969), p. 168
8. Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South, From Slavery to the Great Migration (Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2003), p. 408
9. See Anglo-African (hereafter cited as A-A), November 21, 1863
10. Anglo-African Magazine, January, 1859; (orig. pub. 1859; facsimile pub. Arno Press and New-York Times: New York, 1968), p. 1
11. The obituary of Thomas Hamilton states that the newspaper was founded "in the summer of 1859." A-A, June 10, 1865
12. The Elevator, June 8, 1872
13. Penelope L. Bullock, The Afro-American Periodical Press 1838-1909 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 57
14. C. Peter Ripley, et al., eds., The Black Abolitionist Papers (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), V: 28
15. Bell, writing in The Elevator in 1872 claims 1847
16. Payne claims "about 1843"
17. Bullock cites "the fall of 1841" and Ripley also favors an early date of October 1841, noting the paper survived until 1843
18. Payne, "The Negro in New York Prior to 1860," pp. 60-64
19. Bullock, The Afro-American Periodical Press pp. 13, 57
20. Philip S. Foner, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 5 vols. (orig. pub. New York: International Publishers, 1952; reprinting 1975), I: 84-91
21. Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, III: 482-483n
22. White abolitionist workers and contributors to the abolitionist press were also likely to experience financial privation; see Stacey M. Robertson, Parker Pillsbury: Radical Abolitionist, Male Feminist (Ithaca, NY., Cornell University Press, 2000)
23. see also Family 623, p. 129, First District, Sixteenth Ward, City of Brooklyn, 1860 United States manuscript census, National Archives
24. Robert Hamilton to Gerrit Smith, January 23, 1862, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Library, Special Collections Research Center; Ripley reports (V:28) that the Weekly Anglo-African was bought by the Haitian Government
25. see also Robert Hamilton to Gerrit Smith, January 23, 1862, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Library, Special Collections Research Center
26. The May 9, 1863, issue of the A-A carried a notice that the office had moved from no. 48 to no. 50 Beekman Street; in the spring of 1864 the offices moved further uptown to 184 Church Street, between Franklin and White, a few blocks north of City Hall
27. see A-A, April 30, 1864
28. A-A, March 14, 1863. In 1863 the cost of the paper went up to five cents per copy; as of August 1, 1864, subscription price was increased to $2.50 per annum and a single copy increased to 6 cents
29. Van Pelt letter, A-A June 17, 1865; Titus advertisement May 30, 1863
30. AA, March 14 and April 11, 1863
31. Bullock, Afro-American Periodical Press, p. 56
32. Ripley, et al., Black Abolitionist Papers, III: 359-60n, 109-12, 49
33. Ripley, et al., Black Abolitionist Papers, V: 28n
34. Garnet was the minister of the Shiloh Presbyterian Church in downtown Manhattan, corner of Prince and Marion Streets. On the militant nature of black theology see Craig Steven Wilder, In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City (New York and London: NYU Press, 2001), pp. 36-97
35. Gilbert Anthony Williams, The Christian Recorder, Newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church 1854-1902 (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Co. Inc., 1996), pp. 12-47
36. John Jay to Robert Hamilton, July 10, 1862, Special Manuscript Collection, Jay Family, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; Jennifer P. McLean, The Jays of Bedford (Katonah, NY: 1984), pp. 24, 25-30
37. R. H. Vashon to WA-A, September 28, 1861
38. quoted in William Dudley, et al., eds., The Civil War: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego, CA: 1995), pp. 221-22
39. see also Howard Dodson, Christopher Moore, Roberta Yancy, The Black New Yorkers: The Schomburg Illustrated Chronology (New York: 2000), p. 83
40. Foner, The Writings of Frederick Douglass, III: 441, n. 81
41. Letter of Frederick Douglass to the A-A, March 14, 1863
42. Frederick Douglass to the A-A, March 14, 1863
43. The body of literature on black participation during the Civil War is small but impressive; it includes Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston and New York: 1869)
44. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston: 1953)
45. James M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted During the War for the Union (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965)
46. Edwin S. Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
47. Donald Yacavone, ed., A Voice of Thunder: The Civil War Letters of George E. Stephens (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997)
48. th Massachusetts Regiment (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts in association with Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 2001)
49. Ira Berlin, et al., eds., The Freedman and Southern Society Project, series II: The Black Military Experience (University of Maryland Press)
50. Berlin, Freedom, p. 15; see also Table I on p. 12 in the same volume
51. Sidney Kaplan, "The Miscegenation Issue in the Election of 1864," Journal of Negro History (July 1949), p. 297