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Recognizing the week of May 6th through May 12th as Martin Delany Week.
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WHEREAS, Martin Delany Week serves to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of Martin Delany's birth on May 6, 1812 and in honor of Delany's achievements and contributions to the world, as well as to the ongoing influence of his words and ideas as they continue to inform contemporary dialogues on the nature of race and class in America; and
WHEREAS, Martin Delany lived an extraordinarily life as a social activist, reformer, black nationalist, abolitionist, physician, reporter and editor, explorer, jurist, realtor, politician, publisher, educator, army officer, ethnographer, novelist, and political and legal theorist; and
WHEREAS, Martin R. Delany believed: "Every people should be originators of their own destiny" and his actions exemplified this world view; and
WHEREAS, Delany was born in Charlestown, West Virginia (then a slave state) to Samuel Delany, an enslaved carpenter, and Pati, a free seamstress; and
WHEREAS, When Delany was just a few years old, attempts were made to enslave him and a sibling. Their mother Pati carried her two youngest children 20 miles to the courthouse in Winchester to argue successfully for her family's freedom based on her own free birth; and
WHEREAS, As he was growing up, Delany and his siblings learned to read and write using The New York Primer and Spelling Book, given to them by a peddler; and
WHEREAS, In 1943, Delany began writing on public issues. He began publishing The Mystery (1843 - 1847), one of the first black-controlled newspapers. His activities brought controversy in 1846, when he was sued for libel by a black man whom Delany accused, in The Mystery, of being a slave catcher; and
WHEREAS, While Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were in Pittsburgh in 1847 on an anti-slavery tour, they met with Delany. Together the men conceived the newspaper that became the North Star. It was first published later that year in Rochester...
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