Celebrating Rights and 
Responsibilities
Baltimore & the Fifteenth Amendment, May 19, 1870
An Interactive Historical Investigation by David Troy © 1996

MARTIN DELANY

Military leader, physician, abolitionist.

Portrait taken from James Beard Lithograph.

MARTIN ROBISON DELANY was born in 1812 in Charlestown, Virginia (now West Virginia). He moved to Pittsburgh where he became co-editor (along with Frederick Douglass) of the newspaper The North Star. He also apprenticed with a physician, but was denied admission to several medical schools. He finally was accepted to Harvard Medical School in 1850, but he left before receiving a degree. He returned to Pittsburgh in 1854 where he fought the cholera epidemic. In the Civil War, he rose to the highest rank yet achieved by a black man, that of major. He was also interested in the idea of creating black colonies in Nicaragua (in Central America) and in the Niger river valley (in Africa).Source: Summarized from the Encyclopedia of Black America.

© 1996 David C. 
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