Philip Alexander Bell (1808–1889) was an American newspaper editor and abolitionist.
Born in New York City to an African American family, he was educated at the African Free School and became politically active at the 1832 Colored Convention. He began his newspaper career with William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator and became an outspoken voice on a variety of social and political of issues of the day including abolition, suffrage, and the protection of fugitive slaves.
In 1837, he founded The Weekly Advocate newspaper, edited by Samuel Cornish. The paper was later renamed The Colored American and co-owned by Charles Bennett Ray. In 1860, he moved to San Francisco where he became co-editor of the African-American newspaper The Pacific Appeal, working alongside Peter Anderson. After the Civil War he founded and edited The San Francisco Elevator during the Reconstruction Era.George William Gore, Negro Journalism: An Essay on the History and Present Conditions of the Negro Press, University Microfilms, 1922Lara Langer Cohen, Jordan Alexander Stein, Early African American Print Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, Sep 6, 2012Jan Batiste Adkins, African Americans of San Francisco, Arcadia Publishing, 2012
Bell died on April 24, 1889.
See also List of African-American abolitionists
References