did you ever wonder what the name of the very first black
newspaper in the United States was—where it was founded, by whom,and
why? The answer, for your next water-cooler conversation, is found on
the other side of Emancipation, in fact, long before the Civil War, at a
time when the nation was stretching its geographic limits westward. In
that expansion, of course, it brought the institution of chattel
slavery, and the future of free black people remained a matter of fierce
debate. To paraphrase Hamlet: To colonize or not to colonize
the freed slaves—would the country force them to return to Africa or
allow them to remain in the States?—that was the question. The name of
the first black newspaper published in America, appropriately enough,
was Freedom’s Journal, and its first issue rolled off the press in March 1827.
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