MARTIN ROBISON DELANY
May 6, 1812, Charles Town, Virginia,January 24, 1885, Ohio,
African American abolitionist, physician, and editor of THE MYSTERY, AND THE NORTH STAR in the pre-Civil War period; his espousal of black nationalism and racial pride anticipated expressions of such views a century later.
Martin In search of quality education for their children, the Delanys moved to Pennsylvania when Martin was a child. At 19, while studying nights at an African American church, he worked days in Pittsburgh. Embarking on a course of militant opposition to slavery, he became involved in several racial improvement groups. Under the tutelage of two sympathetic physicians he achieved competence as a doctor’s assistant as well as in dental care, working in this capacity in the South and Southwest (1839).
Returning to Pittsburgh, Delany started a weekly newspaper, The Mystery, which publicized grievances of blacks in the United States and also championed women’s rights. The paper won an excellent reputation, and its articles were often reprinted in the white press. From 1846 to 1849 he worked in partnership with the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, where they published another weekly, The North Star. After three years Delany decided to pursue formal medical studies; he was one of the first blacks to be admitted to Harvard Medical School during his first year he had to leave due to racial tensions and laws. He eventually went back and became a leading Pittsburgh physician.
In the 1850s Delany developed an overriding interest in foreign colonization opportunities for African Americans, and in 1859–60 he led an exploration party to West Africa to investigate the Niger Delta as a location for settlement. In protest against oppressive conditions in the United States, Delany moved in 1856 to Canada, where he continued his medical practice. At the beginning of the Civil War (1861–65) he returned to the United States and helped recruit troops for the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, for which he served as a surgeon. In February 1865, Delany was made a major (the first black man to receive a regular army commission) and was assigned to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, to recruit and organize former slaves for the North. When peace came in April he became an official in the Freedmen’s Bureau, serving for the next two years.
Delany resumed emigration initiatives when the black vote was suppressed, serving as chairman of the finance committee for the Liberia Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company. In 1879 he published The Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color, with an Archeological Compendium and Egyptian Civilization, from Years of Careful Examination and Enquiry, which detailed the cultural achievements of the African people as touchstones of racial pride. But in 1880 he returned to Ohio, where his wife had been working as a seamstress, to practice medicine and help earn tuition for his children attending Wilberforce College
Martin Delany died of tuberculosis on January 24, 1885, in Wilberforce, Ohio. He has been described as a Renaissance man: publisher, editor, author, doctor, orator, judge, U.S. army major, and the first African American to visit Africa as an explorer and entrepreneur. few months after his death, all of his papers, which could have further clarified his position on issues for subsequent scholars, burned in a fire at Wilberforce University in Ohio.
LAURA SMITH HAVILAND
(DECEMBER 20, 1808- APRIL 20, 1898)
She was an American abolitionist, suffragette, and social reformer. She was an important figure in the history of the Underground Railroad.
Laura Smith Haviland was born on December 20, 1808, in Kitley Township, Ontario, Canada to American parents, Daniel Smith and Asenath “Sene” Blancher. Haviland wrote that her father was ’’a man of ability and influence, of clear perceptions, and strong reasoning powers,’’ while her mother Sene was ’’of a gentler turn, …a quiet spirit, benevolent and kind to all, and much beloved by all who knew her.’’ The Smiths were devout members of the Society of Friends, better known as Quakers. Haviland’s father was a minister in the Society and her mother was an Elder.
Though the Quakers dressed plainly, and strictly forbade dancing, singing, and other pursuits they deemed frivolous, many of their views were progressive by the standards of the day. The Quakers encouraged the equal education of men and women.
Quakers did not agitate vocally for abolition, the majority condemned slavery as brutal and unjust.
In 1815, her family left Canada and returned to the United States, settling in the remote and sparsely populated town of Cambria, in western New York. At the time there was no school near their home, and for the next six years, her education consisted of little more than “a spelling lesson” given to her daily by her mother. She described herself as an inquisitive child, deeply interested in the workings of the world around her, who a young age began questioning her parents about everything from scripture to Newton’s Law of Gravitation. Once she had mastered spelling, She supplemented her meager education by devouring every book she could get her hands on especially historical materials.
At sixteen, Laura met Charles Haviland, Jr., a devout young Quaker, whose parents were both respected ministers. They were married on November 11, 1825, at Lockport, New York. According to Laura, Charles was a devoted husband and theirs was a happy marriage. They were the parents of eight children.
The Havilands spent the first four years of their marriage in Royalton Township, near Lockport, New York, before moving in September 1829, to Raisin, Lenawee County in the Michigan Territory. They settled three miles (5 km) from the homestead her parents acquired four years earlier. Michigan was then a largely unsettled wilderness, but the land was cheap, and there were a number of other Quakers in the vicinity.