However, coming upon the end of African enslavement in America, a new wave of African novelists took form. After Europeans or Asians visited the remains of Ancient Egypt, Classical Timbuktu or other University towns in Africa they made sure to destroy records and burn documents while copying, claiming or stealing our Knowledge. There’s no telling how many novels were written in Ancient or Classical Africa. The History of Literature begins with African people. In 2017, a new highway bridge across the Shenandoah River in Jefferson County was named the Major Martin Robison Delany Memorial Bridge.“I wake up each morning and say, thank God I am a man, whereas Delany wakes up and says thank God I am a black man.” - Frederick Douglass speaking of Martin Delany He was the only African-American Civil War officer to be given a field command. In February 1865, he was commissioned as a major in the U.S. In 1861, Delany published Blake: or, The Huts of America, a fictional work detailing the horrors of slavery. Afterward, he explored the Niger Valley region of Africa as a possible site for African-American emigration. In 1858, he aided John Brown in convening the Chatham Convention. Working with the Underground Railroad, he moved to Chatham, Canada. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act inspired Delany to publish The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, And Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, in 1852. After attending Harvard Medical College in 1850, Delany returned to Pittsburgh and opened a medical practice. He shut down the Mystery to become co-editor of Frederick Douglass’s newspaper, the North Star. From 1843 to 1847, Martin Delany founded, edited, and published the Mystery, an abolitionist newspaper.

McDowell and became his medical assistant. He studied medicine as an apprentice under Dr. The family settled in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. In 1822, the Delany family was forced to flee for violating a Virginia law forbidding the education of Blacks. Activist and physician Martin Robison Delany (May 6, 1812-January 24, 1885) was an African-American who was born free in Charles Town.

Blake by martin delany