"Timothy-Thomas-Fortune" (October 3,1856-June 2,1928)

Was an orator,civil rights,leader,journalist,writer, editor,and publisher.He was the

highly influential editor of the nation's African American newspaper The New York Age,was the leading economist in the African American community.He was a long-time adviser to Booker T.Washington and the ghost writer,and the editor of Booker's first autobiography,The Story of my Life and Work.Timothy's philosophy of militant on behalf of the rights of African American people laid one of the foundations of the Civil Rights Movement.

He was born during slavery in Marianna,Jackson County,Florida,to Emanuel & Sarah Jane Fortune.He started his education at Marianna's first school for African Americans after the Civil War.His family moved to Jacksonville where he attended Stanton High School for Negroes.Timothy worked both as a page in the state senate and as apprenticed printer at a Jacksonville newspaper during the time Emanuel,was a reconstruction politician in Florida.At one time Timothy also worked at the Marianna Courier and later the Jacksonville Daily-Times Union.These experiences would be the start of a career wherein he would go on to have his work published in over twenty books and articles and more than three hundred editorials.In 1874 he was mail route agent and then he was promoted to customs inspector for the eastern district of Delaware but only held this position for a few months before resigning in order to attend Howard University.

He was mostly self-taught,in 1875 Timothy Timothy enrolled in Howard University to study law.He changed to journalism after two semesters before leaving school altogether to begin work,in 1876,at the People's Advocate,a newspaper in Washington,D.C.

He moved to New York in 1881 and began process whereby over the next two decades he would become known as editor and owner of a newspaper named first the Globe,then the Freeman and finally the New York Age.

Upon  arrival  in New York,Timothy began working as a printer.He became part owner of various,publications,ultimately founding the New York Freeman 1884.That same year he published a book atitled Black and White: Land,Labor,and Politics in the South.Four years later The Freeman took the new name of The New York Age and set out to become "The Afro-American Journal of News and Opinion."

In Chicago on January 25,1890,Timothy co-founded the militant National Afro-American League to right wrongs against African American authorized by law and sanctioned or tolerated opinion.The league fell part apart after four years.When it was revived in Rochester,New York,on September 15,1898,it had the new name of "National  Afro American Council," With Timothy as president.These two organizations would play a vital role in setting the stage for the Niagara Movement,NACCP and other civil rights organizations to follow.Timothy was also the leading advocate of using "Afro-American to identify his people.Since they are "African in orgin and American in birth," it was his argument that most accurately defined them.

With Timothy as the helm as co-owner with Emanuel Fortune Jr.and Jerome B.Peterson,the New York Age became the most widely read of all African American newspapers.It stood at the forefront as a voice agitating against the evils of discrimination,lynching,mob violence and disenfranchisement.Its popularity was due to Timothy's editorials which condemned all forms of discrimination and demanded full justice for all African Americans.Ida Bell Wells Barnett's newspaper Memphis Free and Headlight had its printing press destroyed and building burned as the result of an article published in it on May 25,1892.Timothy then gave her a job and a new platform from which to detail and condem lynching.His book The Kind of Education the Afro-American Most Needs was published in 1898.He published Dreams of Life:Miscellaneous Poems.After a nervous breakdown,Timothy sold the New York Age to Fred R.Moore in 1907,who continued it until 1960.Timothy published another book,The New York Negro in Journalism in 1915.

Timothy went to work as an editor at the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African League's house organ,the Negro World,in 1923.At its height the Negro World had circulation of over 200,000.With distribution throughout the United States,Canada,Europe,Africa,the Caribbean,and in Central America it may have been the most widely disturbed newspaper in the world at that time.During his tenure at the Negro World,Timothy rubbed shoulders with such literary luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston,W.A. Domingo,Hubert Harrison,and John E.Bruce among others.

Timothy moved to Red Bank,New Jersey,in 1901,where he built his home,Maple Hill.

He died in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.