John Russwurm

"We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentation of things which concern us dearly. It shall ever be our daily duty to vindicate our brethren, when oppressed, and to lay the cause before the public... From the press and the pulpit we have suffered much by being incorrectly represented. Men... have not hesitated to represent us disadvantageously, without becoming personally acquainted with the true state of things."

John Brown Russwurm was born October 1, 1799 in Port Antonio, Jamaica to a white English father and a black enslaved mother. He was sent to school in Quebec at the age of seven and later came to live with his father and step-mother in Portland, Maine. He attended Hebron Academy and after graduation taught at an African American school in Boston. Although his father had died, he returned to Maine in 1824 to live with his step-mother and attend Bowdoin College. He graduated two years later, becoming the third African American college graduate in the country.

Russwurm then went to New York City where he and Samuel Cornish, a Presbyterian minister, began publishing Freedom's Journal, the first newspaper to be owned operated, edited, and published by African Americans. Although the paper originally opposed  the American Colonization Society's efforts to organize African Americans to emigrate to Liberia, when Cornish resigned leaving Russwurm as sole editor, Russwurm began promoting colonization.

Russwurm settled in Liberia in 1829, working as editor of the Liberia Herald and Superintendent of Education in Monrovia, the capital. In 1836 he became Governor of Maryland-in-Liberia, a settlement founded by the Maryland Colonization Society. He worked to build relationships with neighboring Africans as well as with the white leaders of the colonization societies.  After Liberia gained independence in 1847 he worked to unite the two colonies, although this did not occur until after his death. He died in Liberia on June 17, 1851 at the age of 51.