This Day in History

Dec. 3, 1847: North Star Newspaper Launched

Time Periods: 1800
Themes: African American, Media, Slavery and Resistance
Print

On Dec. 3, 1847, Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany launched the abolitionist The North Star newspaper.

The opening editorial, “Our Paper and Its Prospects,” begins:

We are now about to assume the management of the editorial department of a newspaper, devoted to the cause of Liberty, Humanity and Progress.

The position is one which, with the purest motives, we have long desired to occupy.

It has long been our anxious wish to see, in this slave-holding, slave-trading, and Negro-hating land, a printing-press and paper, permanently established, under the complete control and direction of the immediate victims of slavery and oppression. Continue reading.

Read about the North Star and the people’s history of the media and race in the United States in News for All the People by Juan Gonzalez and Joe Torres.

Related Resources
collage of six Black abolitionists in the United States.
Teaching Activities (Free)

‘If There Is No Struggle…’: Teaching a People’s History of the Abolition Movement

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 16 pages.
In this lesson, students explore many of the real challenges faced by abolitionists with a focus on the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Teaching a Peoples History of Abolition and the Civil War (Book Cover) | Zinn Education Project
Teaching Guides

Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War

Teaching Guide. Edited by Adam Sanchez. 2019. Rethinking Schools. 181 pages.
Students will discover the real abolition story, one about some of the most significant grassroots social movements in U.S. history.

Black Abolitionists (Profile) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History
Profiles

Black Abolitionists

Profiles. Zinn Education Project. 2014.
Brief biographies of 25 Black abolitionists.

Books: Non-Fiction

News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media

Book — Non-fiction. By Juan González and Joseph Torres. 2011. 256 pages.
The history of media in the United States, through the lens of race.

Films

The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords

Film. Directed and produced by Stanley Nelson. 1999. 83 minutes.
This documentary chronicles 150 years of Black journalists, printers, and Black-owned newspapers in the United States.

Books: Non-Fiction

The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition

Book — Non-fiction. By Manisha Sinha. 2017. 784 pages.
A groundbreaking history of abolition that recovers the largely forgotten role of African Americans in the long march toward emancipation from the American Revolution through the Civil War.

Books: Non-Fiction

Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Book — Non-fiction. By Kate Masur. 2021.
The movement for equal rights in the decades before the Civil War.

An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World manuscript cover.
This Day in History

Sept. 28, 1829: An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World

David Walker published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, one of the most important documents of the 19th century.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary
This Day in History

March 24, 1853: Mary Ann Shadd Cary Published “The Provincial Freeman”

Mary Ann Shadd Cary published the first edition of “The Provincial Freeman,” Canada’s first anti-slavery newspaper.