Thomas T. Fortune House: Journalist Born a Slave

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Recommended: An essay on the importance of black history

“Can you imagine being born a slave in Florida and living in a beautiful Second Empire mansion in New Jersey?” Primavera asked. “It’s a remarkable American history story. I think what’s left of the house could be easily restored to a sufficient level so the story could be told in an incredibly effective way” (Shockley). Thomas T. Fortune was an important journalist in the history of America who was born into slavery in the state of Florida. He was an educated man and one of the most influential African-American journalists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thomas T. Fortune played an important role in the civil rights movement in America and he deserves to be memorialized in an attempt to remind future generations of the leaders that fought for their rights they have today. Fortune’s house in Red Bank, New Jersey was listed as a historical landmark in 1976 that is currently endangered and vacant. There is currently a fight to keep his house and make it into a cultural museum or tear it down in order to build other miscellaneous buildings for the town. Thomas T. Fortune was born on October 3rd, 1856 and died on June 2nd, 1928. “T. Thomas Fortune was born a slave in Marianna, Florida, on October 3, 1856, and was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863” (PBS). Fortune was luckily able to be educated as a child unlike most freedmen. “He attended a Freedmen's Bureau school taught by two Union soldiers in an African American church in Marianna and also worked in the offices of a community weekly newspaper, where he learned to "stick" type, a skill that provided him with the "rudiments of the trade that w[ere] to determine his life work” (Carle 1487). Thomas T. Fortune was one of few African American men to be educate... ... middle of paper ... ...y 2014. . Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA .Digital Image. Web. 3 May 2014. Mount, Guy. BUILDING MULTIRACIAL FORTUNES: BLACK IDENTITY, MASCULINITY, AND AUTHENTICITY THROUGH THE BODY OF T. THOMAS FORTUNE, 1883-1907. Thesis. San Diego State University, 2011. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014. Shockley, Linda. "Former Home of Journalist T. Thomas Fortune." BlackPressUSA. N.p., 10 July 2013. Web. 03 May 2014. "T. Thomas Fortune House - PAGE." Nationallandmarksalliance. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2014. Waldman, Amy. The Submission:. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print. Zipprich, Ed. "T. Thomas Fortune House." Preservation New Jersey. N.p., Aug. 2011. Web. 03 May 2014.

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