Timothy Thomas Fortune
Encyclopedia
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
in Marianna
Marianna, Florida
Marianna is a city in Jackson County, Florida, United States. The population was 6,230 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau is 6,200 . It is the county seat of Jackson County and is home to Chipola College...
, Jackson County
Jackson County, Florida
Jackson County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida. The population as of the 2000 census was 46,755. As of 2005, the population was estimated to be 48,985 . Its county seat is Marianna, Florida.- History :...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
to Emanuel and Sarah Jane Fortune.
Early life
Fortune started his education at Marianna's first school for African Americans after the Civil War. He worked both as a page in the state senate and apprenticed as printer at a Jacksonville newspaper during the time that his father, Emanuel, was a Reconstruction politician in Florida. At one time he also worked at the Marianna Courier and later the Jacksonville Daily-Times Union. These experiences would be the start of a career wherein he would go on to have his work published in over twenty books and articles and in more than three hundred editorials.Education
Although he was mostly self-taught, in 1875 Fortune enrolled in Howard UniversityHoward University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
to study law. He changed to journalism after two semesters before leaving school altogether to begin work, in 1876, at the People's Advocate, a newspaper in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
New York journalist
Fortune moved to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1881 and began a process whereby over the next two decades he would become known as editor and owner of a newspaper named first the Globe, then the Freeman, and finally the New York Age
New York Age
The New York Age was a black newspaper from 1887 to 1953, and was one of the most influential black newspapers of its time.The paper had it origins as the weekly New York Globe , an African-American newspaper, that was published weekly from at least 1880 to November 8, 1884...
.
Upon arrival in New York, Fortune began working as a printer. He became part owner of various publications, ultimately founding the New York Freeman in 1884. That same year he published a book Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South. Four years later The Freeman took the new name of The New York Age and set out to become "The Afro-American Journal of News and Opinion".
In Chicago on January 25, 1890 Fortune co-founded the militant
Militant
The word militant, which is both an adjective and a noun, usually is used to mean vigorously active, combative and aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in 'militant reformers'. It comes from the 15th century Latin "militare" meaning "to serve as a soldier"...
National Afro-American League
National Afro-American League
The National Afro-American League was formed on January 25, 1890 by Timothy Thomas Fortune. Preceding the foundation of the NAACP, the organization dedicated itself to racial solidarity and self-help. The organization became defunct in 1893 due to lack of support and funding.In September 1898,...
to right wrongs against African Americans authorized by law and sanctioned or tolerated by public opinion. The league fell apart after four years. When it was revived in Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
on September 15, 1898, it had the new name of the "National Afro-American Council
National Afro-American Council
The National Afro-American Council, the first nationwide civil rights organization in the United States, was created in 1898 in Rochester, New York...
", with Fortune as President. Those two organizations would play a vital role in setting the stage for the Niagara Movement
Niagara Movement
The Niagara Movement was a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and Niagara Falls, the Canadian side of which was where the first meeting took...
, NAACP and other civil rights organizations to follow. Fortune was also the leading advocate of using Afro-American to identify his people. Since they are "African in origin and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in birth", it was his argument that it most accurately defined them.
With Fortune at the helm as co-owner with Emanuel Fortune, Jr. and Jerome B. Peterson, the New York Age became the most widely read of all Black newspapers. It stood at the forefront as a voice agitating against the evils of discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
, lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
, mob violence, and disenfranchisement. Its popularity was due to Fortune's editorials which condemned all forms of discrimination and demanded full justice for all African Americans. Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an African American journalist, newspaper editor and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who...
's newspaper Memphis Free Speech and Headlight had its printing press destroyed and building burned as the result of an article published in it on May 25, 1892. Fortune then gave her a job and a new platform from which to detail and condemn lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
. His book The Kind of Education the Afro-American Most Needs was published in 1898. He published Dreams of Life: Miscellaneous Poems in 1905. After a nervous breakdown, Fortune sold the New York Age to Fred R. Moore in 1907, who continued publishing it until 1960. Fortune published another book The New York Negro in Journalism in 1915.
Fortune and the Negro World
Fortune went to work as an editor at the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities LeagueUniversal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey. The organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1990s, prior to Garvey's deportation from the United States of America, after which its...
's house organ, the Negro World
Negro World
Negro World was a weekly newspaper, established in January 1918 in New York City, which served as the voice of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, an organization founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914...
, in 1923. At its height the Negro World had circulation of over 200,000. With distribution throughout the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, the Caribbean, and in Central America it may have been the most widely distributed newspaper in the world at that time. During his tenure at the Negro World, Fortune rubbed shoulders with such literary luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
, W.A. Domingo, Hubert Harrison
Hubert Harrison
Hubert Henry Harrison was a West Indian-American writer, orator, educator, critic, and radical socialist political activist based in Harlem, New York. He was described by activist A. Philip Randolph as “the father of Harlem radicalism” and by the historian Joel Augustus Rogers as “the foremost...
, and John E. Bruce
John Edward Bruce
John Edward Bruce, also known as Bruce Grit or J. E. Bruce-Grit , born a slave in Maryland, United States, became a journalist, historian, writer, orator, civil rights activist and Pan-African nationalist...
, among others.
Fortune moved to Red Bank, New Jersey
Red Bank, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 11,844 people, 5,201 households, and 2,501 families residing in the borough. The population density was 6,639.1 people per square mile . There were 5,450 housing units at an average density of 3,055.0 per square mile...
in 1901, where he built his home, Maple Hill
T. Thomas Fortune House
The T. Thomas Fortune House, also known as Maple Hill, was the home of Timothy Thomas Fortune, a leading journalist and civil rights advocate.-External links:*, at Historic American Building Survey...
. The house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
on December 8, 1976 and the New Jersey Register of Historic Places
New Jersey Register of Historic Places
The New Jersey Register of Historic Places is the official list of historic resources of local, state, and national interest in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The program is administered by the Historic Preservation Office of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.The register was...
on August 16, 1979.
Fortune died in 1928 at age 71 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
.