The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States and Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party
Martin Robinson Delany was born in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), on May 6, 1812, the son of a slave father and a free Black woman. In 1823 his father purchased the family's freedom and relocated them to Pennsylvania. Delany was educated both privately and at the Bethel Church School in Pittsburgh, and later apprenticed himself to a doctor. In 1843 he married Catherine Richards, whose family were members of the Pittsburgh Black elite. In 1850 he was admitted to Harvard Medical School for formal medical training, but eventually withdrew because White classmates protested.Delany founded a Black weekly magazine, MYSTERY (1847-49), and then helped Frederick Douglas publish the NORTH STAR (1847-49). A Black abolitionist, Delany campaigned against the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1852 he advocated emigration as a new start for American Blacks, and traveled to West Africa in 1859 seeking lands for resettlement.During the Civil War Delany recruited African Americans to serve in the Union army, and he himself served as a surgeon with the famous Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. In 1865 he was commissioned as a major, the highest-ranking African American officer in the army. After the war, he became an official in the Freedmen's Bureau for three years; served as a customs house inspector in Charleston, South Carolina; and in 1874 was nominated for lieutenant governor of South Carolina on the Independent Republican ticket, but lost. In the late 1870s he again turned his attention to Liberian emigration.Among his published works are THE CONDITION, ELEVATION, EMIGRATION, AND DESTINY OF THE COLORED PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, POLITICALLY CONSIDERED (1852); BLAKE, OR, THE HUTS OF AMERICA (1859); OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE NIGER VALLEY EXPLORING PARTY (1861); and PRINCIPIA OF ETHNOLOGY (1879).Delany moved to Xenia, Ohio, where he died on January 24, 1885.