Biography Of T. Thomas Fortune's Biography

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Emma Lou Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune Militant Journalist. The University of Chicago Press, 1972, Pp. 388.

T. Thomas Fortune's Biography Book Review
T. Thomas Fortune is an African American speaker, journalist, civil rights leader, publisher, and editor who were born into slavery on October 3, 1856 in Marianna, Florida. T. Thomas Fortune was also known as Timothy Thomas. Fortune’s parents, Emanuel Fortune and Sarah Jane Fortune, were both slaves of Ely P. Moore. Timothy was their first son, but had one older sister and one younger sister along with a baby brother. Emanuel, Fortune’s father, was born from a slave mother and “who was the daughter of a mulatto slave mother and a Seminole Indian.” Emanuel’s father name was Thomas Fortune, and he was an Irishman who was killed in a duel when he was little. Emanuel was owned to a family named Russ. The Russ family’s had a son named Joseph, which was about the same age as Emanuel, who eventually became very close to Emanuel. Emanuel was given the chance to learn how to read due to his friendship with Joseph, but then he was sold Ely P. Moore which allowed him to marry Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane also was a mixed nationality. Jane’s mother had a white father and a slave mother, and Jane’s mother was an Indian. Jane was born in Richmond Virginia, in 1832, and later moved to Florida.
When Timothy was a little child, the Civil War was occurring, but it did not affect him or his family’s life until after the Civil War has ended. At the age of four years old, Abraham Lincoln became president to the United States. The Civil War consisted of two sides: Union and Confederates. The Union fought for the freedom of slaves, while the confederates wanted to keep slavery. The South consisted with m...

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...s, his son Thomas, General Josiah T. Walls. He then spent time in the Sentinel office (newspaper) learning about trades and printing, and the publisher became his friend. His first death in his family occurred, and it was mother at the age of thirty-six. His mother continuously had anxieties about worrying about people coming to kill her family, but the cause of her death is still unknown. According to the book, ultimately, Tim was very distraught about his mother’s death. His father eventually dies in 1897, but he accomplished several things before his death: became “city marshal, county commisioner of Duval County, and clerk of the city market.”

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flgatsaa/Fortune/Fortune.html http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flgatsaa/ttfbio.html http://www.blackpast.org/aah/fortune-t-thomas-1856-1928
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