January 1838

Charles Lenox Remond of Salem, Massachusetts, was hired as a full-time lecturer by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1838, becoming the first Black American employed as a professional abolitionist speaker. He toured New England and Ireland delivering hundreds of lectures for three years before Frederick Douglass emerged as a peer lecturer in 1841.

David Ruggles, the Black New York bookseller, printer, and abolitionist who had personally assisted Frederick Douglass's escape, published the Mirror of Liberty — generally considered the first magazine published by a Black American in the United States. Ruggles had also organized the New York Committee of Vigilance in 1835, which helped over 600 freedom-seekers in its first year alone, including Douglass, whose escape Ruggles personally arranged.

David Ruggles, Black New York printer and abolitionist, published the Mirror of Liberty — the first magazine published by a Black American. Ruggles had also organized the New York Committee of Vigilance in 1835, which helped over 600 freedom-seekers in its first year, including Frederick Douglass, whose escape Ruggles personally arranged.

Lewis Woodson, an AME minister and educator, published a series of essays in The Colored American under the pen name 'Augustine' that laid out a philosophy of Black self-reliance, community economic development, and separate Black institutions. Historians have called Woodson the 'Father of Black Nationalism' for articulating ideas that would later be adopted by Martin Delany, Booker T. Washington, and Marcus Garvey. His writings established an ideological tradition of Black self-determination that ran parallel to integrationist abolitionism.