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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. |
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