Freedom Journal Celebrates 177th Year Anniversary
(PRWEB) March 14, 2004
The cost of freedom is truly a priceless gift worthy of celebration at any time. What makes this celebration a special one? The Freedom Journal is celebrating itÂs 177th Year Anniversary as AmericaÂs Oldest African American Publication in the USA. As an added bonus, Dr. Alphonso Hamilton, Publisher received on behalf of Freedom Journal the distinguished honor of having the Councilman Bernard Parks along with the entire Los Angeles City Council proclaim March 12-14 as Freedom Journal Weekend in the City of Los Angeles.
To understand the rich legacy behind this publication, we must look at the life of its visionary and founder, John Brown Russwurm, editor, politician, and one ofthe nationÂs first black college graduates. Born to a slave mother and a white American merchant father, Russwurm was educated in Quebec and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1826. Upon graduation, he went to New York, where he found that media that was pro slavery and critical of free blacks in the United States. Samuel Cornish who edited and published the publication was born of free parents about 1795, in Delaware and raised in the relatively free environments of Philadelphia and New York City. Although he was an ordained minister and organized the first Black Presbyterian Church in the United States, he is best remembered as a journalist.
Russwurm and Presbyterian minister Samuel Cornish launched the Freedom Journal on March 16, 1827. The headline read, ÂWe wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. The basic theme of the newspaper was to vocalize demands to end slavery in the South and gain equal rights for blacks in the North and attacked slavery and demanded full and equal citizenship for blacks.
Dr. Alphonso Hamilton, Publisher of Freedom Journal continues to preserve the richness of the African American heritage envisioned by these great men. Read by thousands, Dr. Hamilton states that he firmly believes that before there was America there was Black History. It would take a trillion issues of Freedom Journal to write about the courageous exploits of our many heroes and sheroes. So as the legacy of the Freedom Journal continues we look forward to next 177 years with continue hope for a better tomorrow.
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