Delany, Martin Robison

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Martin Robinson Delany
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    Black
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    11
    Family
    Samuel Delany (father), Pati Delany (mother), Catherine A. Richards (wife)
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    Jeffferson College, PA; Harvard Medical School
    Occupation
    Military
    Attorney or Judge
    Businessman
    Journalist
    Relation to Slavery
    Free black
    Military
    Union Army
    US military (Post-Civil War)

    Martin Robison Delany (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    During the late 1840s [Delany] was co-editor of Frederick Douglass's North Star and traveled as an abolitionist lecturer. His call for black economic self-determination and his critique of the black community's religiosity as an obstacle to achieving that end placed him among the most radical of abolitionists. In 1852 he published his argument for emigration as a means by which black Americans could break free of the psychological and physical domination of whites in The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, which was well received by prominent black leaders but attacked by the white abolitionist press.

    In 1856 Delany moved to Chatham, Ontario, where a significant number of blacks had settled and where he expected to find more support for his emigrationist views. There he espoused a Pan-African philosophy that joined the destiny of American blacks with those of Africans and West Indians. In 1859 he explored the Niger Valley in West Africa, where he hoped to establish a settlement to grow cotton with free labor in direct competition with the slave South. He described the region and its prospects in his Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (1861). Although he was warmly received in Great Britain, where he lectured to publicize his venture, his African settlement failed to materialize.

    Paul A. Cimbala, "Delany, Martin Robison," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00184.html.

    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Crane, Gregg D. "The Lexicon of Rights, Power, and Community in Blake: Martin R. Delany's Dissent from Dred Scott." American Literature 68, no. 3 (1996): 527-553. view record
    Penn, Irvine Garland. The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. Springfield, MA: Willey & co., 1891. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Delany, Martin Robison," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/5558.