Martin Delany

Martin Delany

Martin Delaney was born May 6, 1812 and died January 24, 1885. He was a man of many accomplishments within this lifetime, mostly known for his promotion before the civil war of a national home in Africa for African Americans. Although he had many great accomplishments in the medical field as well, he was also known for being an abolitionist, journalist, and writer. He was one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard medical school, he was also the first African American field officer in the United States army, during the civil war. Delany was also a African American abolitionist and one for the American black nationalism.

Delany was born free in Charles Town, West Virginia. His father was enslaved, his mother was a free woman. Delany was from central African decent and is Mandika ethnicity. In 1843 Delany met and married Catharine A. Richards. The couple had eleven children and seven survived into adult hood. In 1831 at the age of nineteen, he went west to Pittsburgh, where he became a barber and laborer.

Delany became a student of Reverend Lewis Woodson of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church. Shortly after he began attending Jefferson college where he was taught classics, Latin, and Greek. During the national cholera epidemic in 1833, Delany became apprenticed to Dr. Drew McDowell, where he learned contemporary techniques of fire capping and leaching. Delany became more active in political matters, in 1835 he attended his first National convention of Men of Color, held in Philadelphia since 1831. He also became involved in the temperance movement and organizations caring for fugitive slaves who had escaped to a free state. Delany began writing on public issues. In 1843 he began publishing "The Mystery." A black controlled newspaper in Philadelphia. His articles and writings were often reprinted. Fredrick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison were in Pittsburgh in 1847, they met with Delaney. Together they came up with the news paper the "North Star".

Delany's next move is what he was most popular for, May 1859 Delany went from New York to Liberia to investigate a new black nation in the region. He traveled for nine months, signed a agreement with eight chiefs in the Abeokuta region that would permit settlers to live on unused land in return for using there skills for the good of the community. The treaty dissolved due to war in the region. Mr. Delany had the idea that the African Americans should leave America and settle somewhere else. Africa, Canada or South America. He felt as though the African American would never have any real success in America.

Further on Delany failed to be accepted into several institutions before being excepted into Harvard Medical School, after presenting letters of support from seventeen physicians. A month after his arrival to Harvard, a group of white students wrote to the

faculty stating, " the admissions of blacks to the medical lectures is highly detrimental to the interests, and welfare of the institution to which we are members." "We have no objections to the education and elevation of blacks but so decidedly demonstrate against there presence in college with us." Within three weeks Delany and his two