ABSTRACT
The history of the African-American in New York City as developed in the study of the author's condition during the period of General Emancipation offers strong testimony to his enduring attributes. The literary societies established by blacks exemplify a clear tendency among these people to improve and cultivate their minds. Even though popular and anti-slavery newspapers existed and often touched at length upon the vital concerns of the African-American people, these organs could not, like the Black Press, devote their columns exclusively to the special and peculiar needs of the black community. As an agency in the molding of self-consciousness, the Black Press stands unparalleled during the prolonged and arduous suffrage and political struggles of blacks in New York City. Thus blacks could not in good conscious support a movement whose obvious tendency was to increase racial prejudice against them.
