"John Henry Murphy Sr"(December 25,1840-1922)

Grew up as a slave an freed by the Emancipation Act of 1863.He enlisted in the military at age 24,during the Civil War and quickly progressed to the rank of Sergeant by the end of the conflict.When he return home to Maryland,he married Martha Elizabeth Howard in 1868,the daughter of a successful farmer.They met at church where his daddy directed the choir.John quickly became interested in the role of the church in education for African American children.He worked with the Sunday school at the Bethel African Methodist  Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in Baltimore superintendent of the District Sunday School in Hagerstown,Maryland in
the late 1880s.
John began to publish a Sunday school newspaper with an old manually operated press. The newspaper,called the Sunday School Helper,was created to assist him with the instruction of the students at his school.In 1892,the pastor of  a local Baptist church,Rev.William M.Alexander,started a rival newspaper,Afro-American to promote his church.By the end the year John purchased the Afro-American for $200 and merged the two newspaper.With the assistance of his five sons and six daughters in the beginning,but by popularity of the publication,allowed John to quickly expand the paper's  employees to nearly 100 workers by the 1920s.
By 1922,,the Afro-American had become the largest African-American owned newspaper along the Atlantic coast and the third largest in the nation after the Chicago defender and the Negro World.By 1922 the Afro-American had a circulation of 14,000.With a full staff at hand,John found more time being involved in numerous civic leadership activities which he viewed as part of the sreuggle for African American civil rights.He was active in the major Civil War veteran's group,the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR),and later worked the National Negro Business League.