Time Line on Deleny

May 6, 1812

Martin Robison Delany was born in Charles Town, Virginia

1818

The five Delany children learn to read and write using "The New York Primer and Spelling Book" given to them by a peddler, using their knowledge to write passes to enslaved blacks. They break a Virginia law against teaching enslaved people of color literacy.

1828

MRD lives and works briefly in Cumberland County after his family couldn't support his education, then returns to Chambersburg.

1831

19year old MRD set out on foot to PITTSBURGH, PA. to become a barber and laborer, later a physician's assistant (cupper and leecher), and a physician himself. In 1831, he resolved to someday visit Africa, his spiritual homeland.

1835

MRD goes to his first Negro Convention with Rev. Woodson.

1840s

MRD studies medicine with abolitionist doctors Dr. F. Julius LeMoyne of Washington County, Pa., Dr. Joseph P. Gazzam of Pittsburgh, and especially Dr. Andrew N. McDowell of Pittsburgh.

1843

Vote less, MRD begins "The Mystery," a black controlled newspaper in Pittsburgh.

1847

MRD meets Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison as they visit Pittsburgh while on a regional antislavery tour. "The North Star," co edited by Douglass and MRD is conceived during that trip.

1850

MRD goes to Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA to apply for admission carrying letters of support from seventeen physicians from the Pittsburgh area, gathered by Dr. LeMoyne. MRD is accepted along with two black Bostonians sponsored by the American Colonization Society, Isaac H. Snowden and Daniel Laing, Jr.

1851

MRD leaves Harvard Medical School having been allowed to complete only one of two four month terms. Martin Delany no longer believes reasoned argument and merit can persuade the dominant white culture to help deserving persons of color to become leaders in the society.

1852

MRD publishes, "The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered." This landmark book alienates virtually all abolitionist leaders by advocating the need for blacks to leave America and start anew with a new nation in Central and/or South America.

1854

During the cholera plague in Pittsburgh in 1854, where he (MRD) was then in practice as a physician, he (MRD) rendered much valued service to the city and to sufferers from this dread malady that public notice in the form of a series of resolutions were proposed, adopted and presented to him in appreciation of his his skill as a physician and of his unselfish and noble sacrifice to the cause of suffering humanity. When nearly every white doctor in Pittsburgh left the city on the appearance of this disease, Dr. Delany remained and organized a corps of Negro nurses of both sexes who cared for those helpless white and black cholera victims, many of whom under his skillful treatment were restored to health." (From a speech by John Edward Bruce in speech at St.