Biographies
Thomas Fortune

Thomas Fortune
T. (Timothy) Thomas Fortune (1856-1928)
Journalist, editor


T. Thomas Fortune was born a slave in Marianna, Florida, on October 3, 1856, and was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. He attended Howard University from 1876 to 1877. From 1891 to 1907 he was the editor and co-owner of several influential New York-based black newspapers including The New York Globe, and The New York Freeman, the latter of which was renamed The New York Age in 1887.
Fortune's tenure at The New York Age for over 20 years established him as the leading African American journalist of the late 19th and early 20th century. Under his editorial direction, the paper became the nation's most influential black paper, and was used to protest discrimination, lynching, mob violence, and disenfranchisement.
In 1890 Fortune co-founded the Afro-American League. It was one of the earliest equal rights organizations in the United States and a precursor of the Niagara Falls Movement and The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Fortune wrote intermittently for The Amsterdam News, and for The Norfolk Journal and Guide. He also served as an editor of Marcus Garvey's Negro World. He died on June 2, 1928.

Further Reading

Fortune, T. Thomas. Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South. Arno Press: 1968.

Franklin, John Hope and August Meier, editors. Black Leaders of the 20th Century. University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1947.

Thornbrough, Emma Lou. T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.