As Douglass explained in the initial issue: "To millions, now in our boasted land of liberty, it is the STAR OF HOPE." Douglass and his family moved from Lynn, Massachusetts, to Rochester, New York, a thriving city on the Erie Canal and one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad before safe haven in Canada. The title referred to the bright star, Polaris, that helped guide those escaping slavery to the North. 2.ĭouglass founded and edited his first antislavery newspaper, The North Star, beginning December 3, 1847. The North Star (Rochester, N.Y.), 1847-1851 "Our Paper and Its Prospects," The North Star, December 3, 1847, p. The Frederick Douglass Newspapers collection contains more than 575 issues of three weekly newspaper titles, which have been digitally scanned from the Library of Congress collection of original paper issues and master negative microfilm. "RIGHT IS OF NO SEX-TRUTH IS OF NO COLOR-GOD IS THE FATHER OF US ALL, AND ALL WE ARE BRETHREN." From its beginning, the motto of The North Star proclaimed: While focusing on ending slavery and promoting the advancement and equality of African Americans, Douglass strongly supported women's rights. One stated object of The North Star, as given in the Decemissue, was to "promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people." It has long been our anxious wish to see, in this slave-holding, slave-trading, and negro-hating land, a printing-press and paper, permanently established, under the complete control and direction of the immediate victims of slavery and oppression…that the man who has suffered the wrong is the man to demand redress,-that the man STRUCK is the man to CRY OUT-and that he who has endured the cruel pangs of Slavery is the man to advocate Liberty.ĭouglass' newspapers also stressed black self-improvement and responsibility. The first issue of The North Star, December 3, 1847, emphasized that belief in "Our Paper and Its Prospects": This online collection presents newspapers edited by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the African American abolitionist who escaped slavery and became one of the most famous orators, authors, and journalists of the 19th century.ĭouglass believed in the importance of the black press and in his leadership role within it, despite the struggles of earlier black newspaper enterprises.
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