1856 – 1928
T. Thomas Fortune (1856–1928) was an African American journalist, civil rights activist, and political thinker widely regarded as the preeminent Black press figure of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He founded the New York Age and organized the National Afro-American League, articulating an early systematic framework for Black political self-determination. His writings engaged questions of race, labor, land, and the intellectual agency of African and African-descended peoples.
Founded the New York Age, one of the most influential African American newspapers of the era
Organized the National Afro-American League (1890), a structural precursor to the NAACP
Authored Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South (1884), an early analysis of racial capitalism
Coined and popularized 'Afro-American' as a self-determined racial designation
Advocated for the epistemic agency and knowledge production of African-descended scholars