Delany, Martin Robison (1812-1885)

US journalist and black American activist. He was involved in the publication of black literature and abolitionist material, and was nominated for lieutenant governor of South Carolina on an Independent Republican ticket (1874) but lost.

Born in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) of a freed black woman and a slave father, he apprenticed himself to a doctor in Pittsburgh. Years later, he was admitted to Harvard Medical School but had to leave because of classmates' protests. He founded a black weekly magazine, Mystery (1843-47), and helped Frederick Douglass to publish his abolitionist organ, the North Star (1847-49). In an 1852 tract, he advocated emigration of blacks, and he travelled to Africa seeking lands for resettlement. During the Civil War, after recruiting black Americans to serve in Union regiments, he was commissioned as a major to carry out a scheme for recruiting a black guerrilla army, but the war ended before he could do anything. He criticized the Reconstruction while working as a customs house inspector in Charleston, South Carolina. He moved to Xenia, Ohio, when the Reconstruction ended. Although never as well known as certain other black American leaders, he has been recognized as a precursor of more militant Black Nationalist movements.