Last Updated on July 31, 2008 by Paulette Brown-Hinds
A weekly newspaper edited by William Howard Day, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and J.W.C. Pennington, the Alienated American was based in Cleveland, Ohio, in the turbulent 1850s. The paper’s objective, according to its editors, “was to aid the educational development of Colored Americans and to assist in enforcing an appreciation of the benefit of trades and to aim at our Social Elevation.” Its editors believed that reading good newspapers was an essential part of being a responsible American. They also saw themselves as appealing to readers beyond African Americans, advocating “equal justice before American Law….”
The paper supported integration over segregation and separatism, and declared itself “willing to stand or fall by … the Constitution of our common country.” Its principal editor Day was a graduate of Oberlin College, and the Alienated American functioned as the official newspaper of the Ohio Negro Convention
Movement. He also used his newspaper to support the organization of Black veterans of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, in which his father fought and died. Day moved to Canada in the late 1850s and actively supported John Brown’s movement for the attack on Harpers Ferry in 1859, printing Brown’s constitution by hand in Canada. He was in England raising funds for the fugitive slave settlement in Buxton, Ontario, when Brown was captured.