Martin Robinson Delany

The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (Dodo Press) Martin Robinson Delany

Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) was an African- American abolitionist, arguably the first proponent of American black nationalism and the first African American field officer in the United States Army. In Pittsburgh, Delany became a student of the Rev. Lewis Woodson of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wylie Street. Shortly after, he began attending Jefferson College, where he was taught classics, Latin and Greek by Molliston M. Clark. In 1849 he began to study more seriously in anticipation of applying to attend medical school. He attended his first Negro Conference in 1835, conceiving a plan to set up a 'Black Israel' on the East coast of Africa and becoming involved in the temperance movement and organisations looking after fugitive slaves. In 1843 he began publishing The Mystery - a black-controlled newspaper. In his book The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, he argued that there was no future for blacks in the United States of America and that they should look to leave and found a new nation elsewhere.