Jesse Chisholm Duke (March 7, 1853 – January 23, 1916) was a religious and political leader in Alabama who established and edited the Baptist '' Montgomery Herald'' newspaper and served as a

Selma University Selma University is a private historically black Baptist Bible college in Selma, Alabama, U.S.. It is affiliated with the Alabama State Missionary Baptist Convention. History The institution was founded in 1878 as the Alabama Baptist Normal an ...

trustee. He advocated for civil rights for African Americans.

Biography

Duke was born into slavery in March 1853 and raised on a plantation near Cahaba,

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

. At the age of 10 he was hired as a servant to a family of French refugees. The eldest daughter taught school, giving Jesse his first education. In the 1870s he owned a grocery store and was a teacher. He established the ''Herald'' in the 1880s. Duke was an influential political leader among Republicans. He wrote an anti-

lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged or convicted transgressor or to intimidate others. It can also be an extreme form of i ...

article that called out white journalists for turning a blind to the children fathered by white men and African American women, drawing a strong reaction that instigated Duke fleeing with his family to

Pine Bluff, Arkansas Pine Bluff, officially the City of Pine Bluff, is the List of municipalities in Arkansas, tenth-most populous city in the U.S. state of Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County, Arkansas, Jefferson County. The population of the city wa ...

where he started another newspaper. Local whites held a public meeting and condemned him as a vile and dangerous character after he published a statement about the growing appreciation a white "Juliet" could have for a "colored Romeo". Duke condemned biased all-white juries and the convict labor system it supplied. He corresponded with

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite#United S ...

about relocating the Lincoln School in Marion to Montgomery. He led the Alabama Colored Press Association during its establishment. Architect and engineer Charles Sumner Duke (1879–1952) was his son. The

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

has the Montgomery ''Herald'' 1886 to 1887 in its collection.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Duke, Jesse African-American publishers (people) 1854 births 1916 deaths Baptists from Alabama Interracial marriage in the United States Selma University alumni