Title
The Mirror of Liberty
Coverage
New York
Publisher
David Ruggles
Date
July 1838
Subject
Volume 1, number 1
Description
The first magazine edited by an African American. Ruggles ran a Temperance Society grocery, a printing business, a reading room, and a bookstore in New York City and assisted in organizing the New York Committee of Vigilance (The Mirror functioned as the Committee’s official organ). He did this while running the city’s underground railroad, which sheltered more than 600 fugitive slaves, including Frederick Douglass, who famously followed in his footsteps as an editor and publisher.