The Anglo-African

The Anglo-African
Title	The Anglo-African
First issue	1863
Final issue	1865
Country	United States
Based	New York City
Language	English
Frequency	Weekly (varied)
Founders	Thomas Hamilton, Philip A. Bell
Editor	Hamilton, James Milton Turner
Category	African American press, abolitionist periodical

The Anglo-African was a 19th-century African American periodical published in New York City during the American Civil War era. It served as a forum for abolitionist advocacy, African American civil rights commentary, literary expression, and community news, attracting contributors and readers connected to the antislavery movement, Republican Party sympathizers, and Black intellectual networks. The magazine intersected with prominent figures and institutions active in abolitionism, Reconstruction, and African American cultural life.

History and Founding

The periodical emerged amid the activism of the 1850s and 1860s associated with Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, and organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, National Equal Rights League, and Colored Conventions Movement. Founders included Thomas Hamilton and Philip A. Bell, whose editorial ambitions drew on the tradition established by earlier Black presses like Freedom's Journal, The North Star, and The National Era. The paper's establishment coincided with political developments including the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg, and debates in the United States Congress over citizenship and suffrage that would culminate in the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment discussions. Its founding was also influenced by transatlantic currents involving figures linked to William Wilberforce and abolitionist networks in London and Edinburgh.

Editorial Leadership and Contributors

Editorial leadership featured Black journalists and activists connected to civic institutions such as the Freedmen's Bureau and educational advocates like Alexander Crummell and Samuel Ringgold Ward. Contributors included poets, essayists, and correspondents whose work aligned with leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, Charlotte Forten Grimké, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and John Mercer Langston. The journal published reports from activists involved with the Underground Railroad, veterans of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and educators associated with Howard University and Wilberforce University. Legal commentary engaged names like Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, and litigators linked to cases before the United States Supreme Court affecting civil rights. The Anglo-African also printed letters from Black clergy associated with African Methodist Episcopal Church and cultural figures like Edwin M. Stanton who intersected with wartime policy.

Content, Themes, and Literary Significance

Its pages combined reportage on events such as the New York Draft Riots, speeches at Faneuil Hall, and accounts of emancipation in New Orleans with literary contributions reflecting traditions established by Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar precursors, and contemporaries like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Themes included advocacy for voting rights in states like New York (state), critiques of discriminatory practices tied to transportation incidents in Boston, and chronicling migration patterns to places such as Kansas during the Bleeding Kansas aftermath and to Caribbean locales including Haiti and Barbados. The periodical offered serialized fiction, biographical sketches of leaders like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, and moral essays resonant with sermons delivered in Abyssinian Baptist Church and addresses at Wilberforce University. Its literary significance lies in documenting African American vernacular, oratory traditions, and developing Black print culture that influenced later journals such as The Crisis and newspapers like Chicago Defender.

Publication History and Distribution

Published in New York City between 1863 and 1865 with periodic interruptions, the periodical circulated through subscription networks linking northern urban centers—Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Cincinnati—and Black communities in Washington, D.C., Savannah, and Charleston, South Carolina. Distribution relied on bookstores sympathetic to abolitionists, reading rooms affiliated with the American Missionary Association, and itinerant agents connected to the Colored Conventions Movement. Financial pressures, competition from established titles like Frederick Douglass' Paper, and wartime postal constraints shaped its irregular schedule. Printing was conducted by presses in neighborhoods near Five Points and printing houses that also produced materials for Republican National Convention campaigns.

Reception and Influence

Contemporaneous reception ranged from praise by activists in the National Equal Rights League and endorsements in The Liberator to criticism from detractors aligned with Copperhead newspapers and conservative editors in Albany, New York. The Anglo-African influenced political organizing among freedpeople during early Reconstruction and provided reportage used by legislators debating the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Its cultural impact extended to younger Black intellectuals who later engaged with institutions like Howard University, Fisk University, and literary circles that produced journals including Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life and networks that supported leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

Archival Preservation and Surviving Issues

Surviving issues are held in special collections at institutions such as Library of Congress, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, and university archives at Howard University and University of Pennsylvania. Microfilm and digitized copies have been curated by projects linked to National Endowment for the Humanities initiatives and collections formerly associated with the American Antiquarian Society. Scholars researching Reconstruction-era print culture consult surviving editions alongside contemporaneous newspapers including The Christian Recorder and The Anglo-African’s peers to trace networks that informed legal reforms like the Reconstruction Acts. Physical condition of extant copies varies; some issues are fragmentary, while bound volumes survive in private collections connected to descendants of contributors and to archives cataloging materials from the Colored Conventions Movement.

Category: African American newspapers Category: 19th-century magazines