''Pacific Appeal'' was an African-American newspaper based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

and published from April 1862 to June 1880.

History

''Pacific Appeal'' was co-founded by

Philip Alexander Bell Philip Alexander Bell (1808–1889) was a 19th-century American newspaper editor and abolitionist. Born in New York City, he was educated at the African Free School and became politically active at the 1832 Colored Convention. He began his new ...

, an African-American civil rights and antislavery activist who had established ''Weekly Advocate'' (edited by Samuel Cornish) and worked for

William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American Christian, abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read antislavery newspaper '' The Liberator'', which he fo ...

's ''Liberator'', and Peter Anderson, a San Francisco civil rights activist and delegate at the California Colored Citizens Convention. It was the successor to the ''

Mirror of the Times The ''Mirror of the Times'' was an African American weekly newspaper in San Francisco, California. It was published during the mid-1850s, though its exact foundation and dissolution dates are not known (roughly founded between 1855–1857 until ...

'', another San Francisco-based African-American newspaper that had been established in 1855, with the change of name occurring along with a change of proprietor from Judge Mifflin W. Gibbs to William H. Carter. Its contemporaries at the time included the ''Anglo-African'', and it was regarded as the official organ of African-Americans on the Pacific slope. The paper’s motto was “He who would be free, himself must strike the blow.” It began publishing in April 1862. Later, Bell and Anderson would split, with Bell accusing Anderson of becoming less antislavery and more accommodationist.

External coverage

The coverage of antislavery and civil rights issues in the first few years has been covered by historians and chroniclers of black abolitionism of the era, including in ''

The Afro-American Press and Its Editors ''Afro-American Press and Its Editors'' is a book published in 1891 written by Irvine Garland Penn. Penn covers African-American newspapers and magazines published between 1827 and 1891. The book covers many aspects of journalism, and devotes a c ...

''.

Notable content

The inaugural 1862 volume contained eight antislavery poems, including four poems by San Francisco poet James Madison Bell, writing under the initials JMB. ''Pacific Appeal'' also published some 250 proclamations by

Emperor Norton Joshua Abraham Norton (February 4, 1818January 8, 1880), known as Emperor Norton, was a resident of San Francisco, California who, in 1859, proclaimed himself "Norton I., Emperor of the United States". In 1863, after Napoleon III invaded M ...

, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, including his proposals for what would later become the

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 ...

and the Transbay Tube."Bridge Proclamations"
The Emperor Norton Trust

References

{{Authority control Defunct African-American newspapers Publications established in 1862 Publications disestablished in 1880 Defunct newspapers published in California Newspapers published in San Francisco 1862 establishments in California 1880 disestablishments in the United States

History

External coverage

Notable content

See also

References