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."
"The question is often asked why is it that the colored people claim equality with the whites, and so few of them have manifested even a propensity for tht equality; that we never have produced authors, writers, professors, not geniuses of any kind, notwithstanding some of us have been free from the formation of this government, up till the present day.
"To say nothing about the disadvantages that would naturally arise to the few, while the many continued in slavery and degradation; yet when Mr. Jefferson, the 'apostle of democracy' was asked by a British statesman: 'Why it was that America, with all her boasted greatness, had produced so few great men and learned authors,' the American statesman quickly replied that, when the United States had been an independent government as long as Greece was before she produced her Homer, Socrates, and Demosthenes, and Rome, before she produced her Virgil, Horace, and her Cicero; or when this country had been free as long as England was before she produced her Pope and Dryden, then he would be ready to answer that question.
"According to the above sensible position of the American statesman, so characteristic of himself, we answer, that more is asked of us, than ever was asked of any other people, as if it is expected that with all the disadvantages with which we are surrounded we should still equal the other citizens, it is giving us more than we claim; it is a tacit acknowledgement, that we are naturally superior to the rest of mankind, and therefore, are much more susceptible than they.
"With this cursory view of the subject, then, all that we have in conclusion to say is that if we produced any equals at all, while we are in the present state, to say the least of it, we have done as much as Greece, Rome, England or America.
William Lloyd Garrison's 'The Liberator, October 20, 1843, reprinted Delany article from 'The Mystery.'
