Timothy Thomas Fortune (October 3, 1856June 2, 1928) was an American journalist, newspaper publisher, orator, and civil rights activist who was best known as the managing editor of the The New York Age. Fortune was born into slavery in Marianna, Florida. Following emancipation, Fortune's father, Emanuel, got involved in Florida politics and secured Fortune a role as a page in the Florida Legislature, where he developed an interest in politics and a distrust of white politicians. During this time, he learned the printer's trade. In his late teens, he briefly attended Howard University, worked as a printer in Washington D.C., and got married.
Fortune moved to New York City around 1880 and took editorial oversight of the Rumor, which became The New York Globe. He quickly gained a reputation for his editorials, which followed him to subsequent publications the New York Freeman and the Age. Widely considered the best African American journalist of his age by his peers, Fortune wrote and spoke often of racial injustices suffered by African Americans, criticized politicians both Democratic and Republican, argued against monopolies and for class solidarity, and was a proponent of African Americans defending themselves with force, if needed, which gained him a reputation as an agitator. Praise was not universal for Fortune, and critics called him the "crank of the colored press" and "dangerous". He was a founding member of the National Afro-American League, National Afro-American Council, and National Negro Business League.
In the 1890s, Fortune developed a strong friendship with Booker T. Washington and helped promote his aims, which were often in conflict with Fortune's personal beliefs. Fortune edited and ghostwrote Washington's publications while writing for the Age. Despite his fame, Fortune's work as a journalist was never profitable and Washington propped up the Age with loans and paid stories. Fortune's health began to decline in the late 1890s and he developed a reliance on alcohol that continued to worsen through the 1900s. He suffered a mental health crisis in 1907 and sold his stake in the Age, coinciding with the end of his relationship with Washington.
Fortune was soon destitute and subsisted by freelancing for various publications in the United States. His health gradually improved through the 1910s and he assumed the editorship of the Negro World in 1923. He held the position until his death in 1928. Following his death, Fortune was eulogized as the "dean of Negro journalists" and his work as "the voice of the Negro".
Early life and education
Timothy Thomas Fortune was born a slave in Marianna, Florida, on October 3, 1856, to Emanuel and Sarah Jane Fortune, the third of five children. Emanuel and Sarah Jane were of African, European, and Native American descent. Following the end of the American Civil War, Union troops and the Freedmen's Bureau operated a school in Marianna which Fortune attended and at which he developed a love for books. Fortune also worked around the home, fished, picked cotton, and began learning the printer's trade at the Marianna Courier.
Emanuel became involved in Florida politics during the Reconstruction era. He was a member of the state's constitutional convention of 1868 and elected to the Florida House of Representatives. Post-Reconstruction upheaval and white supremacist mob violence forced the family to flee to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1869 and had a strong impact on the young Fortune. Emanuel had secured Fortune a job as a legislative page in the Florida Senate and he was in Tallahassee when the family fled to Jacksonville. Fortune worked as a page for four legislative sessions, during which time he developed an interest in politics and a lifelong mistrust of white politicians, whom he had witnessed taking advantage of their African American counterparts. Fortune also worked in the offices of the Tallahassee Sentinel, learning further the printer's trade.
In his teens, Fortune returned to Jacksonville. He enrolled in the Stanton Institute, which he attended for two years, and worked at the Jacksonville Daily Union as a printer's devil. In 1873, Fortune began working at the Jacksonville post office as an office boy and newspaper clerk, then was appointed mail route agent on the Jacksonville, Pensacola & Mobile Railroad line between Jacksonville and Chattahoochee in 1874. The same year, he was named a special customs inspector in Delaware. Fortune resigned the position after a few months to attend Howard University, enrolling in winter 1874. His limited schooling led him to be assigned to the preparatory department of the university, which rounded out his education in Latin, mathematics, grammar, and history. Fortune, though religious himself, found the school's emphasis on religion stifling, later writing he "did not matriculate at the college for the purpose of learning how to die, but how to live" and that religious observances took up too much time and impacted his ability to study.
While attending Howard, the bank in which he stored his savings failed, leaving him penniless. Fortune began to work as a courier for the United States Treasury and in the print shop of The People's Advocate while taking evening law classes at the university. He was largely self-taught, reading books on history, government, literature, and law. It was during this time he developed his literary and oratory style. In 1877, Advocate owner John Wesley Cromwell moved the publication from Alexandria, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., and placed Fortune in charge of printing. Fortune also wrote an opinion column under the nom de plume Gustafus Bert. During his time in Washington, he married Carrie C. Smiley.
Financial woes led the Advocate to cut Fortune's pay, and coupled with Smiley's desire to return home for the birth of their first child, the family moved back to Florida in 1877. He briefly worked as a teacher in Duval and Madison counties but found conditions and pay unbearable. He returned again to the Daily Union, but found the post-Reconstruction environment of the American South intolerable, and moved his family to New York City around the turn of the decade.
Career The New York Globe In New York, Fortune began working as a compositor for the religious newspaper The Weekly Witness. After a year, he partnered with George Parker and Walter Sampson in an effort to save Parker's paper, the Rumor, from financial ruin. Fortune became managing editor of the Rumor, writing and setting the paper in the evenings and working for the Witness during the day. He insisted on renaming the Rumor to The New York Globe; the paper assumed the name in July 1881. The Globe began as a four-page weekly and quickly gained recognition for its high print quality and Fortune's editorials.
He believed the editorial page to be the most important page in a newspaper, and used his columns to militantly advocate for civil rights and criticize the federal government for its failure to protect African American citizens. Fortune's editorials covered an array of issues, including support for interracial marriage and the creation of a federal education bureau; criticism of racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the back-to-Africa movement; denouncements of monopoly, protective tariffs, and land grants to railroad companies; lamentations of court cases that eroded civil rights; and coverage of the worsening conditions for African Americans in the American South. He also advocated for African Americans to use force to defend themselves if needed, garnering him a reputation as an agitator. In an analysis of Fortune's editorial style, academic Carolyn Calloway-Thomas described his use of counterproof, direct questions, examples, and concrete evidence to serve as the foundation of his arguments and expose weaknesses in the positions of his opponents. Linguistically, Fortune's writing was geared toward a more educated audience and relied upon turns of phrase. He commonly utilized long sentences to contextualize a point, then followed them with short sentences to state his conclusions.
The Globes coverage was focused on national and racial news, rather than local New York happenings, and by 1883 it claimed to have circulation of more than 6,000 and subscribers in every state in the United States. The paper had eleven employees in its editorial and printing departments, and correspondents across the East Coast and in Chicago. Fortune was widely regarded as the most "brilliant and influential" African American journalist in the US and the Globe as the country's most powerful and influential African American newspaper. Praise was not universal, and both members of the white and African American press criticized Fortune and the Globe, calling him the "crank of the colored press" and "dangerous".
In 1884, Fortune published Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South, a book on race relations and economics in which reviewers saw Fortune espouse economic theories similar to those of Henry George and John Swinton. The Globe began experiencing financial difficulties the same year for reasons unknown. Historian Emma Lou Thornbrough attributed the difficulties partially to Fortune's editorial attacks against the Republican Party. At the time, most African Americans supported Republicans, whom Fortune accused of abandoning their minority constituents. He likewise disavowed Bourbon Democrats, declared the Globe independent of party politics, and vacillated between supporting Republicans and Democrats, saying both parties were "rotten to the core". Fortune repeatedly attacked Republicans through his editorials and advised African Americans to become independents. He ultimately supported Grover Cleveland in the 1884 United States presidential election, though the Globe offered a weak endorsement to James G. Blaine. In August 1884, George Parker sold his stake in the Globe to William B. Derrick, who wanted to make the paper a partisan organ for the Republican Party, a desire with which Fortune vehemently disagreed. Parker had also taken out a mortgage collateralized by the Globes printing presses and other equipment; immediately after the election, Parker's attorneys foreclosed on the mortgage and seized the equipment, effectively closing the paper. The Globe published its final issue on November 8, 1884.
The Freeman
Two weeks after the publication of the Globes final issue, Fortune launched the Freeman, later the New York Freeman. He was the editor and sole owner. The paper quickly ran into financial difficulties but by the end of 1885 had achieved a semblance of stability and claimed a circulation of approximately 5,000. The business supplemented its income with job printing. Early contributors to the paper included John Edward Bruce and Gertrude Bustill Mossell.
As with the Globe, the Freemans renown relied heavily upon Fortune's editorials. Jerome B. Peterson and Thomas McCants Stewart also contributed to the editorial page. Fortune's writings reflected his economic interests and the inspiration of George and Swinton, argued against African American workers acting as strikebreakers, advocated for temperance and racial justice, and opposed the reduction of federal representation from states that disenfranchised African American voters. Fortune also used the Freeman to voice his support for the Cleveland administration, which some of his peers in the African American press criticized as whitewashing the president.