Martin Delany
Martin Delany | |
---|---|
U.S. | |
Buried | Massies Creek Cemetery, , U.S.Cedarville, Ohio |
Allegiance | United States |
Service/ | |
Years of service | 1863–1865 |
Rank | Major |
Battles/wars | American Civil War |
Spouse(s) | Catherine A. Richards |
Martin Robison Delany (May 6, 1812 – January 24, 1885) was an American abolitionist, journalist, physician, military officer and writer who was arguably the first proponent of
Delany traveled in the South in 1839 to observe slavery firsthand. Beginning in 1847, he worked alongside
After the Civil War, Delany went to the South, settling in South Carolina. There he worked for the
Early life and education
Delany was born free in
His mother Pati's parents were born in the Niger Valley, West Africa, and were of Mandinka ethnicity. Her father was said to have been a prince[7] named Shango, captured with his betrothed Graci and brought to America as slaves. After some time, their master gave them their freedom in Virginia, perhaps based on their noble birth. Shango returned to Africa. Graci stayed in the colony with their only daughter Pati.[6] When Delany was just a few years old, attempts were made to enslave him and a sibling. Their mother Pati carried her two youngest children 20 miles to the courthouse in Winchester to argue successfully for her family's freedom, based on her own free birth.[6]
As he grew up, Delany and his siblings learned to read and write using The New York Primer and Spelling Book, given to them by a peddler. Virginia prohibited education of black people. When the book was discovered in September 1822, Pati moved with her children to nearby Chambersburg in the free state of Pennsylvania to ensure their continued freedom. They had to leave their father Samuel, but a year later he was allowed to buy his freedom and he rejoined his family in Chambersburg.[8]
In Chambersburg, young Martin continued learning. Occasionally he left school to work when his family could not afford for him to study. In Pennsylvania, black children were only educated through the elementary grades, so Delany educated himself by reading. In 1831, at the age of 19, he journeyed west to the growing city of
Delany and three other young black men were later accepted into Harvard Medical School, but they were forced to leave after white students protested. The whites reportedly petitioned the school to exclude applicants of color.[10]
Marriage and family
While living in Pittsburgh, in 1843 Delany met and married Catherine A. Richards. She was the daughter of a successful food provisioner, said to be one of the wealthiest families in the city.[11] The couple had eleven children, seven of whom survived into adulthood. The parents stressed education, and some of their children graduated from college.[4]
Pittsburgh
Delany became involved with Trinity
Delany became more active in political matters. In 1835, he attended his first National Negro Convention, held annually in Philadelphia since 1831.[13] He was inspired to conceive a plan to set up a 'Black Israel' on the east coast of Africa.[8]
In Pittsburgh, Delany began writing on public issues. In 1843, he began publishing
While Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were in Pittsburgh in 1847 on an anti-slavery tour, they met with Delany. In the same year, after a falling-out of sorts occurred between Douglass and The Liberator editor Garrison over the use of violence in the abolition cause and the concept of a strictly African-American-run newspaper, Delany with Douglass conceived of the newspaper developed as the North Star: to give voice to the stories of African Americans from their own accounts.[16][17] They started publication later that year in Rochester, New York, where Douglass was based. Douglass handled the editing, printing, and publishing, while Delany traveled to lecture, report, and obtain subscriptions.[18]
In July 1848, Delany reported in the North Star that U.S. District Court Justice John McLean had instructed the jury in the Crosswait trial to consider it a punishable offense for a citizen to thwart those trying to "repossess" an alleged runaway slave. His coverage influenced the abolitionist Salmon P. Chase to lead a successful drive to remove McLean as a candidate of the Free Soil Party for the Presidency later that summer.[19]
Medicine and nationalism
While living in Pittsburgh, Delany studied medicine under doctors. He founded his own practice in cupping and leeching. In 1849, he began to study more seriously to prepare to apply to medical school. In 1850 he was accepted into Harvard Medical School, after presenting letters of support from seventeen physicians, although other schools had rejected his applications. Delany was one of the first three black men to be admitted there. However, the month after his arrival, a group of white students wrote to the faculty, complaining that "the admission of blacks to the medical lectures highly detrimental to the interests, and welfare of the Institution of which we are members". They cited that they had "no objection to the education and elevation of blacks but do decidedly remonstrate against their presence in College with us."[20]
Within three weeks, Delany and his two fellow black students,
Delany worked for a brief period as principal of a colored school before going into practice as a physician. During a severe cholera outbreak in 1854, most doctors abandoned the city, as did many residents who could leave, since no one knew how the disease was caused nor how to control an epidemic. With a small group of nurses, Delany remained and cared for many of the ill.
Delany is rarely acknowledged in the historiography of African-American education.[23] He is generally not included among African-American educators, perhaps because he neither featured prominently in the establishment of schools nor philosophized at length on Black education.[24]
Emigration
Having heard stories about his parents' ancestors, he wanted to visit Africa, which he considered his spiritual home.[25]
In August 1854, Delany led the National Emigration Convention in
Delany advanced his emigrationist argument in his second manifesto, "Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent". The 1854 convention approved a resolution stating: "[A]s men and equals, we demand every political right, privilege and position to which the whites are eligible in the United States, and we will either attain to these, or accept nothing."[27] A significant number of women attendees also voted for the resolution, considered the foundation of black nationalism.[citation needed]
In 1856, Delany moved his family to
In response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), in 1859 and 1862, Delany published parts of Blake; or the Huts of America: A Tale of the Mississippi Valley, the Southern United States, and Cuba in serialized form. His novel portrayed an insurrectionist's travels through slave communities. It highlights Cuba as the source of illegal international slave trade to the United States.[29] He believed that Stowe had portrayed slaves as too passive, although he praised her highlighting the cruelty of Southern slave owners. Modern scholars have praised Delany's novel as an accurate expression of black culture. The first half of Part One was serialized in The Anglo-African Magazine, January to July 1859. The rest of Part One and Part Two was included in serial form in the Weekly Anglo African Magazine from 1861 to 1862. It was not published in book form until 1970 and the last chapters remain missing.[30][31]
In May 1859, Delany sailed from New York for Liberia, to investigate the possibility of a new black nation in the region. The colony had been founded by the American Colonization Society to relocate free black people outside of the United States. He traveled for nine months and signed an agreement with eight indigenous chiefs in the Abeokuta region, in today's Nigeria, that would permit settlers to live on "unused land" in return for applying their skills for the community's good.[8] It is a question whether Delany and the chiefs shared the same concepts of land use.[citation needed] The treaty was later dissolved due to warfare in the region, opposition by white missionaries, and the advent of the American Civil War.[8]
In April 1860, Delany left Liberia for England. His presence at the International Statistical Congress in London in July of that year discomfited the American minister to Great Britain, former Vice-President George M. Dallas:
Toward the close of the session, Lord Brougham, seeing Mr. Dallas, the American Minister, present, said: 'I hope my friend Mr. Dallas will forgive me reminding him that there is a negro present, a member of the Congress.' (Loud laughter and vociferous cheering.) After the cheering had subsided, Mr. Dallas made no sign, but the negro in question, who happened to be Dr. Martin R. Delany, from Canada, rose, amid loud cheers, and said: 'I pray your Royal Highness will allow me to thank his lordship, who is always a most unflinching friend of the negro, for the observation he has made, and I assure your Royal Highness and his lordship that I am a man.' This novel and unexpected incident elicited a round of cheering very extraordinary for an assembly of sedate statisticians.[32]
According to some sources, an abashed American delegate walked out in protest.[8] As 1860 ended, Delany returned to the United States. The next year, he began planning settlement of Abeokuta, and gathered a group of potential settlers and funding. However, when Delany decided to remain in the United States to work for emancipation of slaves, the pioneer plans fell apart.[citation needed]
Union Army service
In 1863, after
In early 1865, Delany was granted an audience with Lincoln.[35] He proposed a corps of black men led by black officers, who he believed could serve to win over black Southerners to the Union side. Although the government had already rejected a similar appeal by Frederick Douglass, Lincoln was impressed by Delany and described him as "a most extraordinary and intelligent man" in a written memo to his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.[36] Delany was commissioned as a major in February 1865, becoming the first black line field officer in the U.S. Army and achieving the highest rank an African American would reach during the Civil War.[8][37]
Delany especially wanted to lead colored troops into Charleston, South Carolina, the former secessionist hotbed. When Union forces captured the city, Major Delany was invited to the War Department ceremony in which Major General Robert Anderson would unfurl the very flag over Fort Sumter that he had been forced to lower four years earlier. Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson and abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Henry Ward Beecher also participated in the ceremony. Major Delany had recruited black Charlestonians to restore the capacity of the 103rd and 104th regiments and start the 105th regiment of U.S. Colored Troops. He arrived at the ceremony with Robert Vesey, son of Denmark Vesey, who had been executed for starting a slave rebellion. The man came in the Planter, a ship piloted by the former slave Robert Smalls (who had taken it over during the war and driven the ship to Union lines, running the Confederate blockade outside Charleston Harbor).
The following day, the city learned that President Lincoln had been assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Delany continued with the planned political rally for Charleston's freedmen, with Garrison and Senator Warner as speakers.[38] He soon published an open letter to African Americans asking them to contribute to a memorial for "the Father of American Liberty".[39] Two weeks later, Delany was scheduled to speak at another rally, before the visiting Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. A journalist was surprised when Delany addressed the issue of ill-feelings between black freedmen and mulattos (or "browns", free people of color and mixed race) in Charleston. He said that two mulattos had informed authorities about Denmark Vesey's plans for a rebellion in 1822 conspiracy, rather than trying to promote racial healing and empowerment between the groups.[40]
After the war, Delany initially remained with the Army and served under General
Later life
Following the war, Delany continued to be politically active. He established a land and brokerage business in 1871 and worked to help black cotton farmers improve their business and negotiating skills to get a better price for their product.
Delany unsuccessfully sought various positions, such as appointment as Consul General to
Delany was appointed as a trial justice (judge) in Charleston.[47] In 1875, charges of "defrauding a church" were brought against him. After conviction, he was forced to resign, and served time in jail. Although pardoned by Republican Governor Chamberlain, with the intervention of Wade Hampton,[48] Delany was not allowed to return to his former position.
Delany supported Democratic candidate
In early 1877, the federal government withdrew its troops from the South after reaching a compromise over the national election. This marked the end to Reconstruction, and Governor Chamberlain left the state. The Democrats, calling themselves Redeemers, had taken control of South Carolina's legislature. Paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts continued to suppress black voting in the Carolinas, especially in the upland counties.
In reaction to whites regaining power and the suppression of black voting, black Charlestonians started planning again for emigration to Africa. In 1877, they formed the Liberia Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company, with Delany as chairman of the finance committee. A year later, the company purchased a ship, the Azor, for the voyage led by Harrison N. Bouey. He served as president of the board to organize the voyage.[8]
Last years and death
In 1880, Delany withdrew from the project to serve his family. Two of his children were students at Wilberforce University in Ohio and required money for tuition fees. His wife had been working as a seamstress to make ends meet. Delany began practicing medicine again in Charleston. On January 24, 1885, he died of tuberculosis in Wilberforce, Ohio.[8]
Delany is interred in a family plot at Massies Creek Cemetery in Cedarville, Ohio, next to his wife Catherine, who died July 11, 1894.[53] For over 120 years his family plot was only marked with a small government-issued tombstone on which his name was misspelled. Three of his children, Placido (died 1910), Faustin (died 1912) and Ethiopia (died 1920), were subsequently buried alongside their parents. Every grave except Martin's remained unmarked. In 2006, after many years of fundraising, The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center was able to raise $18,000 (~$26,179 in 2023) to have a monument built and placed at the grave site of Delany and his family. The monument is made of black granite from Africa and features an engraved picture of Delany in uniform during the war.[54]
Legacy and honors
According to historian
- was his deep-seated pride of race in his wide range of activities.... Delaney has been called 'the father of African nationalism,' a sobriquet reflecting his pride in his color and ancestry, his insistence that Negro Americans control their destiny, and his firm belief that Black Africa would one day regain its ancient glory.... By word and deed Delaney's pride in blackness and his emotional attachment to Africa struck a responsive vein in the hearts of many Negro Americans of his day and subsequently.[55]
- In 1853 the abolitionist poet James Monroe Whitfield dedicated his book "America and other poems" to Delany.[56]
- In 1991, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission installed a historical marker near 5 PPG Place in Pittsburgh, near to where Delany published 'The Mystery,[further explanation needed] Meaning unclear. that commemorated Delany's historic importance.[57] In 2003, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission installed a second historical marker on Main Street in Chambersburg, noting Delany's historic importance.[57]
- In 1999, Star Lodge #1 of the Prince Hall Masons erected a historical marker in Charles Town to honor Delany (adding an "n" to his middle name).[58]
- In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Delany as among the 100 Greatest African Americans.[59]
- In 2017, the West Virginia Legislature passed a resolution to name the new bridge over the Shenandoah River carrying West Virginia Route 9 the "Major Martin Robison Delany Memorial Bridge"[60][61]
- A mannequin of Delany greets visitors at the From Slavery to Freedom exhibit at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[62]
Works
See the bibliography, "Martin Delany's Writings" at the Wayback Machine (archived May 1, 2009), West Virginia University Library.
- The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered, (1852)
- The Origins and Objects of Ancient Freemasonry: Its Introduction into the United States and Legitimacy among Colored Men (1853)
- Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent in Proceedings of the National Emigration Convention of Colored People Held at Cleveland, Ohio the 24th, 25th and 26th of August, 1854 (1854)
- Introduction to William Nesbitt, Introduction to Four Months in Liberia (1855)
- Blake, or the Huts of America, (1859–62), Part I (the only part Delany published);
- Martin Robison Delany, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (1861)[63]
- University Pamphlets: A Series of Four Tracts on National Policy (1870)
- Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color, with an Archaeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization (1879)
- Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent (1854)
See also
- List of African-American abolitionists
- Thornton Chase, a white officer in the 104th USCI
References
- ^ "Martin Delany Home Page". Archived from the original on April 25, 2009. Retrieved June 21, 2009. Profile] Libraries.wvu.edu; accessed August 29, 2015.
- Stanford, E. Martin R. Delany (1812–1885). (2014, August 6). Encyclopedia Virginia - ^ a b "Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) •". 2007-03-03. Retrieved 2022-03-06.
- ISBN 9781412904094 [1](last retrieved 9 December 2018)
- ^ a b "Martin R. Delany (1812–1885) – Encyclopedia Virginia". Retrieved 2022-03-06.
- PMID 11612967.
- ^ a b c Frank A. Rollins, Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany, 1883, reprint 1969, Arno Press, pp. 14–17; accessed February 21, 2011.
- ^ Glasco (2004), p. 56
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Gates Jr, Henry Louis, Emmanuel Akyeampong, and Steven J. Niven. Dictionary of African Biography. Vol. 6. Oxford University Press, USA, 2012. pp. 177-179
- ^ Blowers, Diana (February 22, 1995). "Delany made his mark as a doctor, writer, black nationalist, officer". Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio). p. 25 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ Biography of Martin Robison Delany, biography.com; accessed November 4, 2015.
- ^ Neil A. Hamilton, American Social Leaders and Activists, Infobase Publishing, 2002, pp. 103–04, accessed February 24, 2011.
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p487
- ^ "This Week In Black History 5-29-13". New Pittsburgh Courier. Archived from the original on July 8, 2013. Retrieved August 13, 2015.
- "National Negro Convention Movement (1831-1864) - The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed". blackpast.org. April 2011. Retrieved August 13, 2015. - ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p29
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p27
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved November 2, 2018.
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online. January 12, 2000. Retrieved November 2, 2018.
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p69-70
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p109-110
- ^ Sterling 1996, pp. 130–131.
- ^ Sterling 1996, p. 133.
- ^ Delany, Martin Robison (1852). The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (EPUB). Philadelphia, PA: Martin R. Delany.
- ^ Anderson, 1988; Bullock, 1967; Butchart, 1980).
- JSTOR 2967385.
- ^ "Timeline of Martin R. Delany's Life, The Early Years" Archived 2011-04-27 at the Wayback Machine, hosted at West Virginia University; accessed February 20, 2011
- ^ "National Emigration Convention of Colored People". The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Cleveland, Ohio: Case Western Reserve University. March 4, 1998. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p243
- ^ "Chatham Vigilance Committee and the Demarest Rescue". Clio. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
- ^ Tess Lloyd. "The Suppressed Fury of Enslaved Black Americans and Cubans in Martin Delany's Novel 'Blake'". The Ten-Hour Day: A Blog about Nineteenth-Century Labor, Women’s Rights, Slavery, Abolition, the Civil War, and More. April 16, 2023. |url=https://tesslloyd.com/blog/on-the-brow-of-a-volcano-cuba-the-south-and-slavery-in-martin-delanys-blake
- ^ Stand still and see the salvation"], Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture, University of Virginia, on line. Retrieved January 14, 2009.
- ^ "Delany, Martin R. (1812–1885)". www.encyclopediavirginia.org.
- ^ Douglass' Monthly, Sept. 1860, p.334, as transcribed by Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center (retrieved Apr. 29, 2023); see also The Empire, Sydney, Australia, Sept. 20, 1860, p.2 (retrieved Apr. 29, 2023).
- ^ Douglas R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction (Bloomsbury Press 2014), pp. 24-26
- ^ White, Deborah (2013). Freedom On My Mind (volume 1 ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. p. 334.
- ^ White, Deborah (2013). Freedom On My Mind (Volume 1 ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. p. 335.
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p388
- ^ Egerton p. 51
- ^ Egerton, pp. 2-6
- ^ Egerton p. 91
- ^ Egerton pp. 7, 14-15
- ^ Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour, May, 1865 to May 1, 1866, pp.80-82, Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1866. (Reid's narrative does not name Delany, but identifies him as "the same negro about whom Lord Brougham raised that beautiful little diplomatic muddle with United States Minister Dallas, at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in London.")
- ^ Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 p. 546
- ^ Egerton pp. 130, 192
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p409-410
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p437
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003), p442
- Foner p. 543 - ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p490
- ^ Levine (editor) and Delany (2003) p452
- ^ Foner p. 572
- ^ George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984, p. 132
- ^ Walter Brian Cisco, Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman, Potomac Books, 2004, p. 260
- ^ Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, Paperback, 2007, p. 174
- ^ MARTIN ROBISON DELANY MONUMENT Archived 2016-01-06 at the Wayback Machine, lwfaam.net. Retrieved January 27, 2019.
- ^ Delany profile Archived 2016-02-12 at the Wayback Machine, bjmjr.net. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
- ^ John A. Garraty, ed., Encyclopedia of American Biography (1974) pp 270-271.
- ^ Whitfield, James M. (1853). America and other poems. public domain: James S. Leavitt. pp. dedication.
- ^ a b "Martin R. Delany (1812–1885) – PHMC Historical Markers". Historical Marker Database. Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. Archived from the original (Database search) on December 7, 2013. Retrieved December 10, 2013.
- ^ Martin Robinson Delany Historical Marker (hmdb.org)
- ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
- ^ "HCR 41". West Virginia Legislature.
- ^ "Building Bridges: African-American Civil War major's name lives on". The Journal (Martinsburg, WV). Retrieved 17 July 2018.
- ^ "From Slavery to Freedom | Exhibits | Heinz History Center".
- A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, "America in the Niger Valley: A Colonization Centenary", Phylon22:4; 23, 225–39 (1962).
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-306-80721-3. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
Further reading
- Asante, Molefi K., Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge, Africa World Press, 1990, ISBN 0-86543-188-4
- Brittan, Jennifer C. "Martin R. Delany's Speculative Fiction and the Nineteenth-Century Economy of Slave Conspiracy." Studies in American Fiction 46.1 (2019): 79-102. online
- Doolen, Andy. "When Mammy Lies: The Everyday Resistance of Slave Women in Martin Delany's Blake." Studies in American Fiction 45.1 (2018): 1–17. online
- Levine, Robert Steven (1997). Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity. UNC Press Books. p. 314. ISBN 0-8078-4633-3.
- Delany, Martin Robison (2003). Levine, Robert Steven (ed.). Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader. UNC Press Books. p. 507. ISBN 0-8078-5431-X.
- Lott, Eric, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507832-2. p. 236.
- Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
- Glasco, Laurence Admiral, editor. The WPA History of the Negro in Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8229-4232-1
- Havard, John C. "Mary Peabody Mann's Juanita and Martin R. Delany's Blake: Cuba, Urban Slavery, and the Construction of Nation." College Literature 43.3 (2016): 509–540. online
- McGann, Jerome. "Rethinking Delany's Blake." Callaloo 39.1 (2016): 80-95. online
- Madera, Judith. Duke University Press - Black Atlas Black Atlas: Geography and Flow in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
- Nwankwo, Ifeoma K. Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness, and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
- Orihuela, Sharada Balachandran. "The Black Market: Property, Freedom, and Piracy in Martin Delany's Blake; or, The Huts of America". J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 2.2 (2014): 273–300. online
- Rollins, Frank A. (1970). Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany. Ayer Publishing (reprint). ISBN 0-405-01934-3.
- Shreve, Grant. "The Exodus of Martin Delany." American Literary History 29.3 (2017): 449–473.
- Sterling, Dorothy. The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany 1812–1885, 1971, reprint Da Capo Press, 1996.
- Thomas, Rhondda R. & Ashton, Susanna, eds (2014). The South Carolina Roots of African American Thought. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. "Martin Robison Delany (1812–1885)," p. 37–41.
External links
- Web site on Delany
- "Martin Delany", Mr. Lincoln and Freedom, The Lincoln Institute and the Lehrman Institute
- James Surkamp, "Timeline of Martin Delany's Life" at the Wayback Machine (archived April 24, 2012), To Be More Than Equal: The Many Lives of Martin R. Delany, 1812–1885
- Works by Martin Delany at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Martin Delany at Internet Archive
- James Surkamp, "Some Writings by Delany in The Mystery" at the Wayback Machine (archived July 10, 2012)
- "Downtown: The Great Fire", The Mystery, 16 April 1845, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Library
- "Martin R. Delany", Encyclopedia Virginia
- Martin Delany at Find a Grave
- This article contains material written by James Surkamp and released into the public domain. The original material can be found at To Be More Than Equal: The Many Lives of Martin R. Delany, 1812–1885 at the Wayback Machine (archived April 24, 2012), the Martin Delany homepage.
- Martin Delany and Egyptology by Mario Beatty
- Martin R. Delany[permanent dead link] by Robert S. Levine