Afro-American Newspaper Publisher Frances Toni Draper

The Afro-American has crusaded for racial equality and economic advancement for Black Americans for 130 years. In existence since August 13, 1892, John Henry Murphy Sr., a former slave who gained freedom following the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, started the paper when he merged his church publication, The Sunday School Helper with two other church publications, The Ledger (owned by George F. Bragg of Baltimore’s St. James Episcopal Church) and The Afro-American (published by Reverend William M. Alexander, pastor of Baltimore’s Sharon Baptist Church).

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