T. Thomas Fortune

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 Globe's 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 Globe's 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 Globe's 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 Freeman's 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.

Though he had intended the Freeman to be a business entirely by African Americans, for African Americans, financial struggles led him to partner with two unnamed white men for financial support with the job printing business in early 1886 that left him in editorial control of the Freeman. The same year, Fortune published the pamphlet The Negro in Politics, which traced what he saw as the exploitation of African American voters by the Republican Party and urged African Americans to put race before political allegiance. He began offering support for the Prohibition Party in 1887, becoming a registered lecturer at the National Prohibition Bureau in August of that year and saying in October he would be voting for Prohibitionist candidates.

In addition to his fame as a journalist, Fortune had developed a reputation as an orator, and supplemented his income by giving speeches to various groups and engaging in freelance work. It was not enough, and Fortune left the Freeman. His brother, Emanuel Jr., and Peterson took over operations of the Freeman in October 1887.

The National Afro-American League and Council

In the late 1880s, Fortune proposed the creation of a national organization to advocate for African American civil rights, focusing on disenfranchisement in the American South, lynching and mob rule, inequity in the distribution of educational funds, reforming the Southern penitentiary system, and discrimination against African Americans in public transit and public spaces. He maintained that the group should be peaceful, and in 1887 drafted a constitution for it that said it would provide education on these issues, seek redress through the court system, and remove violent members. The concept received support from some members of the African American press and racial leaders including Booker T. Washington, though others voiced concerns that it would exacerbate racial tensions rather than relieve them and that there were structural issues, particularly in the South, too great to overcome. Members of the white press in the South were similarly against the organization.

A convention was held in Chicago on January 25, 1890, with 135 delegates from 23 states. A constitution was adopted for the group, dubbed the National Afro-American League, that stated its function was to provide support for similar state and local groups and achieve its aims through peaceful means. Joseph C. Price was elected president of the League; Fortune was elected secretary. Several months after the formation of the League, Fortune was arrested for disorderly conduct following his refusal to leave a hotel bar when staff refused to serve him. Fortune sued the owner in civil court and attempted to use the incident to boost the profile of the League. His legal efforts were successful and a jury awarded him approximately US$1,000; an appeal by the hotel was unsuccessful. The League, however, was not sustained. Delegates to an 1891 convention at which Fortune was elected president of the League represented just seven states, and he declared the League defunct in 1893 due to a lack of funds and support.

As conditions continued to worsen for African Americans in the US, the National Afro-American League was reconstituted in 1898 as the National Afro-American Council, led by Fortune and Alexander Walters. Meetings of the Council became referendums on the leadership position in race relations of Booker T. Washington, who sought to control the group. The Council claimed partial credit for bringing a test case about a voter registration law in Alabama to the United States Supreme Court, though the Court ruled against the Council. Fortune assumed the presidency of the Council in 1902. Like the League before it, the Council had little success achieving its aims and garnering support. Fortune went on a lecture tour in 1904 to raise interest and funds, but spent more than he raised and resigned the presidency, citing mass apathy for the effort.

The Age

Peterson renamed the Freeman to the The New York Age and declared it to be a Republican publication in 1887. Fortune went to work as a freelancer, writing for newspapers including the New York Sun and Boston Evening Transcript. Emanuel Jr. contracted pneumonia in the winter of 1888 and went to Florida in 1889 to recuperate, dying in 1890. Fortune returned to the Age as its editor in February 1889 but continued to freelance, as the Age was not profitable enough to support both him and Peterson.

The Age was regarded as the best-written and most influential African American newspaper of the late 19th century, owing, as with Fortune's previous publications, to his work on the editorial page. Fortune often wrote in defense of the sexual morality of African American women, condemned antimiscegenation laws, and advocated for the right to interracial marriage. He argued against African American racial purists, noting that racial integration was inevitable short of expatriation of African Americans from the US, and warned against discrimination based on skin tone and prejudice against multiracial people within his race. Fortune was a proponent of using the term "Afro-American" to describe his race, arguing that it was the most all-encompassing and that other terms, like "Negro" and "colored", did not describe the whole race, or, in the case of "colored", were a "cowardly subterfuge". He advocated for civil rights, neighborhood control of housing and schools, and the creation of an African American state in the Oklahoma Territory. Economically, Fortune's writings relied heavily on class distinctions and had socialist overtones. He urged African Americans to purchase land to build wealth and work with working class whites against landed monopolies. He also debated specific legislation in his columns, supporting the Lodge Bill and opposing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, McKinley Tariff, and the Conger Compound Lard Bill. In 1890, Fortune was named chair of the executive committee of the National Afro-American Press Association. He hired Ida B. Wells in 1892 following the destruction of the latter's newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee. Wells covered lynching for the Age and Fortune helped secure her speaking engagements.

Fortune had openly supported Grover Cleveland in the election of 1888, but recanted his support for Democrats in August 1889, writing Southern members of the party and Republican Mugwumps had taken significant steps to disenfranchise African American voters. He turned to the Republican Party and worked to elect various candidates, but was often critical of the party for its failures to protect African Americans and felt it had been overrun by "aristocrats and bloated corporationists". The Age endorsed Benjamin Harrison in the presidential election of 1892 and Fortune campaigned for William McKinley in the election of 1896. Fortune excoriated McKinley for his failure to protect African Americans. In a speech before the Racial Protective Association in Washington D.C., Fortune said of McKinley, "I want the man whom I fought for to fight for me, and if he don't I feel like stabbing him," and called for the deaths of one white man for every African American killed at the Wilmington massacre. Fortune's words drew rebuke from both the white and African American press, though some argued his words had been taken out of context and that he was not calling for McKinley's assassination. The Age at first opposed McKinley's second run for the presidency, but Fortune eventually supported him, likely with the hopes of receiving a federal appointment. He was called to work at the federal headquarters of the Republican National Committee in September 1900 and campaigned for McKinley in the Midwest, but was ultimately denied an appointment.

Relationship with Booker T. Washington

Fortune met Booker T. Washington sometime in the 1880s; the two developed a friendship while Fortune was on assignment in the South for the Sun. He traveled extensively in the American South in the 1890s, writing for the Age, Sun, and other newspapers, covering topics including the Tuskegee Institute, the Tillman movement, the role of African American preachers in politics, the back-to-Africa movement, chain gangs and convict leasing, and discrimination in the railroad system. Fortune first assumed the role of confidant and advisor to Washington in 1890; the friendship between Washington and Fortune strengthened throughout the 1890s and by 1898, the pair were writing letters to each other almost daily. Washington established the National Negro Business League in 1900 and named Fortune chair of the group's executive committee.

Their relationship was not strictly interpersonal. Fortune used his skills as writer and editor to assist Washington with the latter's publications, including writing the introduction for Washington's collection of speeches, Black-Belt Diamonds, editing and revising The Future of the American Negro, Sowing and Reaping, and The Story of My Life and Work, and ghostwriting A New Negro for a New Century and The Negro in Business. Fortune was paid for some of this work.

The Age never became a profitable venture and Washington became a financial lifeline for Fortune and the newspaper, paying the journalist for speeches, travel, and publishing content related to the Tuskegee Institute, as well as offering Fortune the occasional loan. He promoted Washington's views and the Institute through the Age and freelance work for other newspapers. Fortune's beliefs were not in lockstep with Washington's. He disagreed with Washington's stances on topics such as literacy requirements for voting rights and criticized his friendly attitude toward Southern whites. Publicly, Fortune praised Washington's cordiality with white Southern leaders and defended him against African American critics. Editorials in the white press dubbed Fortune "the Afro-American agitator" and frequently contrasted him with the more reserved Washington. African American leaders who were critical of Washington, including W.E.B. Du Bois, and William Monroe Trotter, declared Fortune an "apostate", a "weakling", and "untrustworthy".

Fortune's health declined following his father's death in 1897, falling ill with mental health and stomach issues that rendered him unable to work. He recovered briefly but fell ill again in 1898; Washington loaned him funds while he was out of work. Fortune was stricken with rheumatism in 1899 and received a surgery for an unknown condition. He had also become increasingly reliant on alcohol, a condition about which Washington counseled temperance. Following a conference on race in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1900, at which there were discussions held about repealing the Fifteenth Amendment, Fortune made a series of speeches on disenfranchisement and wrote of the need for African Americans to use force to defend their rights if the law would not protect them. He was criticized for his remarks and blamed for a race riot in the Tenderloin district of Manhattan by members of the white press.

Sale of the Age

Following Theodore Roosevelt's inauguration, Washington gained significant influence in the administration and fractures began appearing in his relationship with Fortune. The pair began falling out as Fortune struggled to reconcile his own beliefs with the positions maintained by Washington and published via Fortune's journalism, as well as Fortune's worsening alcoholism. Fortune was distrustful of Roosevelt but restrained his criticism in the Age in hopes of getting a federal appointment. The appointment did not come, in part due to the lack of an enthusiastic recommendation from Washington, who withheld, at least partially, due to reports of Fortune being publicly drunk. Fortune's federal appointment came in 1902 as a Special Immigrant Agent of the Treasury Department, tasked with studying race and trade conditions in Hawaii and the Philippines. Fortune suggested the time may be right for African American emigration to the islands, a prospect rejected by local residents. Upon returning to the US, Fortune found he would not be paid for his final weeks of travel as his appointment had only been for six months.

Backlash against Washington and his stances was growing among prominent African Americans in the early 1900s. Fortune was often targeted by Washington's opponents in the press, who called him Washington's tool and weak-willed. The friendship between Fortune and Washington was irreparably damaged in 1904 after Fortune revealed Washington's role in voter disenfranchisement cases in Alabama, an effort which Washington had worked to keep concealed. Following the falling out, Fortune began attacking Roosevelt in the columns of the Age, though these attacks ceased shortly thereafter when Jerome Peterson, Fortune's business partner, was appointed consul in Venezuela. The Age endorsed Roosevelt in the election of 1904. In the summer of 1904, Fortune was working on The Negro in Business and assisting Fred R. Moore with The Colored American Magazine in addition to his work writing and operating the Age. Moore, meanwhile, reported to Washington episodes of Fortune's drinking.

Washington began increasing investment into the Age in 1905, allowing the paper to expand, but Fortune struggled to keep up with the work after attending conferences of the Negro Business League and Afro-American Council and became a "nervous wreck", a condition exacerbated by the return of Peterson and its ensuing financial strain. Accounting difficulties and late payments from Washington put Fortune and the Age in a financial crisis; both were bailed out again by Washington. Fortune used the Age to denounce the Niagara Movement's challenge to Washington's leadership and discredit his detractors, including Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. He also attacked Roosevelt for his failure to speak out against disenfranchisement and lynching, as well as his handling of the Brownsville affair, urging African American military members to leave the service and others not to enlist. Fortune independently published a collection of his poetry in 1905.

Washington's investment in the Age continued in 1906, though payments were late and left Fortune in a significant financial deficit. The paper incorporated in 1907 and Fortune was named president of the company. Washington was one of the firm's principal stockholders. Washington had publicly denied owning stakes in the press and said it would not be appropriate for him to own the press, thus requiring efforts to conceal his involvement in the Age. It was decided the Age should print its own copies and Washington demanded the paper expand to eight pages. Fortune struggled to keep up with the work but could not delegate responsibility. The Age quickly suffered financial difficulties and Fortune began experiencing severe mental distress. Fortune sold his stake in the Age to Moore in October 1907 for US$7,000, the purchase financed by Washington.

Descent, recovery, and death

Fortune traveled to Chicago following the sale of the Age, gave a "wretchedly incoherent" sermon at a local church, and attempted to purchase The Chicago Conservator and The Voice of the Negro. He invested in the latter, not knowing it was in significant debt. Increasingly concerned about Fortune's mental state and the possibility he would reveal Washington's ownership stake in the Age, Washington transferred his shares to secretary Emmett Jay Scott and published a statement saying Washington owned no stake in the paper. Fortune responded, revealing that even if Washington had divested, he had at one point owned 950 shares of the Age.

By the end of 1907 Fortune had returned to New York. He attempted to relaunch the Freeman as a monthly magazine, publishing the first issue in February 1908, but it lasted only a few months and Fortune was left destitute. Moore paid him US$15 per week to write for the Age and sought to keep Washington and Fortune on poor terms by reporting to Washington on Fortune's behavior. Fortune held the position at the Age for three weeks before quitting after a six-day binge drinking episode. He sold the promissory notes he had received for his stake in the Age to make ends meet and begged acquaintances for money to purchase food. He briefly worked for the Republican National Committee in 1908, writing in support of William Howard Taft's bid for the presidency, and in 1909 intermittently freelanced for various African American publications. Fortune's health improved in 1910 and he found work as an associate editor of The Philadelphia Tribune and reporter for the Amsterdam News, and wrote intermittently for the Age. His mental health had improved significantly by 1911 but the Tribune could no longer afford to pay him, and he returned to the Age, where he worked as an associate editor until 1914. He left after failing to be paid for his work. Fortune bounced around from publication to publication after leaving the Age, writing for The Washington Sun, the Harrisburg Advocate-Verdict, the Indianapolis Ledger, Philadelphia Tribune, Amsterdam News, and The Colored American Review. Fortune lived in Trenton and Lawrenceville, New Jersey, during these years and continued to have bouts of depression and anxiety that made it difficult to work. In 1917, he was appointed assistant director of an African American welfare bureau that helped immigrants find housing and jobs.

Fortune continued to freelance and in 1919, began writing editorials and opinion columns for the Norfolk Journal and Guide. He became the editor of the Negro World, the official publication of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, in 1923. There was no indication that Fortune agreed with Garvey's ideology, but he appreciated Garvey's ability to mobilize African Americans.

Fortune collapsed in the spring of 1928 and was taken to his son's home in Philadelphia, where he continued to dictate editorials from his bed. He died on June 2. Fortune was eulogized as the "dean of Negro journalists" and his work as "the voice of the Negro".

Family and personal life

Fortune and his wife, Carrie, had five children. His first two children died in infancy and Fortune doted on his daughter, Jessie. Another son, Stewart, died in 1889. His youngest child, Frederick, was born in 1891. Fortune and Carrie separated in 1906, with Fortune citing differences in "temperament" as the key cause. Carrie moved to an apartment in Harlem which Fortune paid for. In 1907, he suggested divorce and was having an affair with another woman. He proposed reuniting with Carrie in 1912, but she declined, at least partially out of concern for caring for Fortune during bouts of poor mental health.

In 1901, Fortune purchased a home in Red Bank, New Jersey. His lack of funds led the home to be sold under court order in 1910. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Fortune was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He enjoyed roller skating, poetry, and cycling.