Martin Delany
| Martin R. Delany | |
|---|---|
Martin R. Delany
|
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| Born | May 6, 1812 Charles Town, Virginia (present-day Charles Town, West Virginia), U.S. |
| Died | January 24, 1885 (aged 72) Wilberforce, Ohio, U.S. |
| Allegiance |
 United States of AmericaUnion |
| Service/branch | Union Army |
| Years of service | 1863–1865 |
| Rank |
 Major
|
| Battles/wars | American Civil War |
Martin Robison Delany (May 6, 1812 – January 24, 1885) was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, and arguably the first proponent of black nationalism. He was one of the first three black people admitted to Harvard Medical School.
Trained as an assistant and a physician, he treated patients during the cholera epidemics of 1833 and 1854 in Pittsburgh, when many doctors and residents fled the city. He worked alongside Frederick Douglass to publish the North Star. Active in recruiting blacks for the United States Colored Troops, he was commissioned as a major, the first African-American field officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War.
After the Civil War, he worked for the Freedmen's Bureau in the South, settling in South Carolina, where he became politically active. He ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor and was appointed a Trial Judge. Later he switched his party loyalty and worked for the campaign of Democrat Wade Hampton III, who won the 1876 election for governor.
Delany was born free in Charles Town, Virginia (present-day Charles Town, West Virginia) to Pati and Samuel Delany. Although his father was enslaved, his mother was a free woman, and Martin took her status under Virginia's slave laws. Both sets of Delany's grandparents were African. His paternal grandparents were of Gola ethnicity (from modern-day Liberia), taken captive during warfare and brought as slaves to the Virginia colony. Family oral history said that the grandfather was a chieftain, escaped to Canada for a period, and died resisting slavery abuses.
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