Martin Delany's writing skills first appeared and developed in writing for his own newspaper in Pittsburgh, "The Mystery," These reports and editorials caught the eye of many journalists, since "The Mystery" was, for several years in the 1840s, the only newspaper published by African Americans. Often cited as a source of columns and opinion in newspapers including other mainstream newspapers and in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, "The Liberator," it was only a matter of time that Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany would meet and germinate together the idea of a new "black voice" newspaper, "The North Star."
"Situated as we are, as mere nonentities in the midst of others, the most deserving, respectable and praiseworthy among us, in the eye of the law and its consequent enactments, being placed far beneath the most vile vagabonds while being denied the privileges granted to the pauper and vagrant; those, by the laws, declared to be nuisance; while privileges are being enjoyed by other men, privileges which from their nature necessarily elevate the female, the wife, mother, sister and daughter, and stimulate the tender youth; we colored male citizens are made the degraded vassals of the most insufferable servility, more tolerable than death itself.
"Spurned the right of election as representatives, and peerage as jurors, denied and robbed of the elective franchise and consequently the right of representation;(in many of the states deprived of the right of testimony even against a vagabond; though our hoary headed father or mother may be maltreated, abused or murdered, our wives and sisters ravished before our eyes!
"Prohibited the right of bearing arms as patriots and soldiers in defence (sic) of the Country, thereby precluding us from these claims upon our country in common with other inhabitants or citizens; denied the right of citizenship in toto, in order thereby to exclude us from the protection of the laws, which of course we are prevented from having any part in making, thereby, disdaining to make us the subject of legislation, except it be for the object of stamping us with still deeper degradation. This scheme of oppression being complete, as a matter, of course, it follows that the forfeiture of every claim to civil and decent respect is fully implied in the base surrender of our manhood, crouching in servility at the feet of insolence and usurpation."
Quoted in Ullman pp. 52+53 from 'The Mystery.'
