via Wikimedia
Martin Delany was the son of an enslaved African - and grandson of a prince. All of his grandparents had been brought over from Africa, and his father’s father was, by some accounts, a village chieftain, and his mother's father a Mandingo prince.
He grew up to be an abolitionist, the first Black Field Officer in the U.S. Army, and one of the earliest proponents for Black people to return to Africa.
In 1850, Delany started Harvard Medical School to complete his medical studies. But just after three weeks, he had to leave because white students petitioned for it. Two years later, he was publishing works on why Black people need to leave this country.
“We are a nation within a nation, we must go from our oppressors,” he wrote. He preached Black pride and, with other thinkers, led a new movement to leave North America in the face of unrelenting slavery and white supremacy.
In 1854, he launched the Emigration Convention of 1854 and planned expeditions to explore areas in Africa, Haiti, and Central America for Blacks to move.
This “Return to Africa” movement was so successful that nearly 20% of all free Blacks in the northern United States emigrated to Haiti in the four decades before the Civil War.
Delany is considered to be the “father of Black nationalism,” the first to even explore the possibility of us leaving - so we should definitely celebrate his contribution!