Timothy Thomas Fortune

Timothy Thomas Fortune (October 3, 1856 – June 2, 1928) was an American journalist, newspaper publisher, orator, and civil rights activist who was best known as the managing editor of the The New York Age. Fortune was born into slavery in Marianna, Florida. Following emancipation, Fortune's father, Emanuel, got involved in Florida politics and secured Fortune a role as a page in the Florida Legislature, where he developed an interest in politics and a distrust of white politicians. During this time, he learned the printer's trade. In his late teens, he briefly attended Howard University, worked as a printer in Washington D.C., and got married.

Fortune moved to New York City around 1880 and took editorial oversight of the Rumor, which became The New York Globe. He quickly gained a reputation for his editorials, which followed him to subsequent publications the New York Freeman and the Age. Widely considered the best African American journalist of his age by his peers, Fortune wrote and spoke often of racial injustices suffered by African Americans, criticized politicians both Democratic and Republican, argued against monopolies and for class solidarity, and was a proponent of African Americans defending themselves with force, if needed, which gained him a reputation as an agitator. Praise was not universal for Fortune, and critics called him the "crank of the colored press" and "dangerous". He was a founding member of the National Afro-American League, National Afro-American Council, and National Negro Business League.

In the 1890s, Fortune developed a strong friendship with Booker T. Washington and helped promote his aims, which were often in conflict with Fortune's personal beliefs. Fortune edited and ghostwrote Washington's publications while writing for the Age. Despite his fame, Fortune's work as a journalist was never profitable and Washington propped up the Age with loans and paid stories. Fortune's health began to decline in the late 1890s and he developed a reliance on alcohol that continued to worsen through the 1900s. He suffered a mental health crisis in 1907 and sold his stake in the Age, coinciding with the end of his relationship with Washington.

Fortune was soon destitute and subsisted by freelancing for various publications in the United States. His health gradually improved through the 1910s and he assumed the editorship of the Negro World in 1923. He held the position until his death in 1928. Following his death, Fortune was eulogized as the "dean of Negro journalists" and his work as "the voice of the Negro".