Freedom's Journal: The First African-American Newspaper (review)

On March 16, 1827, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm published the inaugural issue of Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper in the United States. The newspaper, Cornish and Russwurm informed their readers, was designed to address a particularly troubling gap in the contemporary American literary marketplace. Although 1820s America boasted a diverse, almost dizzying assortment of periodical literature, there was still no newspaper explicitly created by, and for, free African Americans. "We wish," Cornish and Russwurm wrote in their debut issue, "to plead our cause. Too long have others spoken for us" (13). In her new monograph, Jacqueline Bacon examines Cornish and Russwurm's efforts to create a forum in which African Americans could "speak for themselves," demonstrating the significant impact Freedom's Journal had on the development of an independent black print culture, and the evolution of African American rhetoric and ideologies about slavery, civil rights, and self-determination in the early republic.

Freedom's Journal, Bacon argues, constituted the beginnings of a truly independent black press, in which African Americans could forge community connections, construct new rhetorics about freedom and slavery, and "contribute to discussions and debates about issues important to them" (8). In the often viciously racist, white-controlled print culture of the early republic, Freedom's Journal was a vitally important new site for community cohesion, offering black business owners a place to advertise their businesses, self-help and charitable organizations a venue in which to publicize their activities, and authors a new site in which to publish their literary work. It fostered African Americans' civic consciousness, publishing pieces that encouraged black men to educate themselves about, and work to assert, their voting rights, and highlighted the many obstacles facing African Americans seeking to claim their civil rights in America's (ostensibly free) society. Recognizing the close ties between literacy and citizenship, Freedom's Journal's editors and contributors encouraged African American women and men to pursue their educations, join literary societies, and sharpen their rhetorical skills by writing pieces for the newspaper's pages.

In an era in which the majority of newspapers took fierce partisan stands in favor of one particular cause or party, Freedom's Journal was unique, Bacon affirms, in that it opened its pages to a truly diverse assortment of voices and views. Although the paper was staunchly anticolonizationist for most of its existence, for example, its editors nonetheless published numerous pieces in favor of colonization, offering readers the opportunity to weigh the merits of both sides of this and many other arguments. Even after Russwurm (who served as the paper's sole editor after Cornish's resignation in September 1827) adopted the colonizationist cause, he continued to print pieces critiquing the movement until the paper's demise, and his departure for Liberia, in 1829.

In the first section of her monograph, Bacon skillfully situates Freedom's Journal in the political, social, and cultural context from which the paper emerged, concisely yet thoroughly discussing the development of free black communities in northern cities in the years between the Revolution and the emergence of Freedom's Journal. While the 1820s are justly seen as a low point in American race relations, with free African Americans facing increasing mob violence and organizations such as the American Colonization Society emerging and flourishing, Bacon cautions historians against depicting Freedom's Journal's emergence primarily as a reaction to an undeniably racist society and print culture. Although Freedom's Journal provided an important forum in which to combat such racism, the newspaper, Bacon stresses, was not created primarily in response to racist attacks, but rather to promote civic education and empowerment, to foster racial pride, and to encourage community unity.

Having provided a brief but detailed overview of Freedom's Journal's historical context and publication history, Bacon embarks on five chapters that examine the content of the paper in depth, considering the issues of self-help, gender roles, contemporary perceptions of Africa...