Honoring Fredrick Douglass and Martin Delany On The North Star’s Founders' Day

On Dec. 3, 1847, Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany launched The North Star in Rochester, New York. The abolitionist newspaper became the most influential anti-slavery newspaper of the 19th century.

Douglass and Delany believed in the Black free press. The abolitionists came up with the name of the newspaper after the star Polaris, which guided those w…