Philip H. Murray
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Philip H. Murray | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1842 Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | February 17, 1917 (aged 74–75) St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Occupation | Newspaper publisher |
| Family | Alice Murray, daughter |
Philip H. Murray (1842 – February 17, 1917) was an abolitionist, journalist, phrenologist, and civil rights activist who spent most of his career in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he participated in the abolitionist movement in that region.
During the US Civil War he continued his work and served as a recruiting officer to help enlist blacks into the Union Army. After the war, he focused on journalism. In 1867, he established the first black newspaper in Kentucky, The Colored Kentuckian. He later moved to St. Louis where he continued to work in journalism and as an advocate for black education and civil rights. He was also the president of the first Negro Press Association.[1]
Philip Houston Murray (or Murry) was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1842. His parents were Samuel and Sarah Murray. His father was born a slave in Kent County, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore of that state. His mother was mixed black, Native American, and Irish. His mother's paternal grandfather reportedly was half African-American and half Native-American and paid for a woman to be brought from Ireland and made his wife. Philip's father considered schools for black children to be poor and Philip was only permitted to attend school for a week before he was put under private education by Father Patrick Keevil, a graduate of Minonth College, England. By the age of fifteen, Murray began to study physiology and the physical brain, which would influence his later work in phrenology.[2] Philip reportedly had 13 brothers and sisters.[1]
Civil War
Before the American Civil War, Murray became involved in abolitionism and worked with many abolitionists of the era. He also delivered a series of well-received lectures on "Cerebral Physiology" throughout New England and was an active practitioner of phrenology.[2] During the civil war, he spent some time travelling in the South and working as a correspondent for northern newspapers. He endeavored to organize a company to join the Union Army when General Robert E. Lee's Confederate forces invaded Pennsylvania, but was refused by Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin.[2] In 1864, he was a delegate to the convention at Syracuse, New York, and was chosen chairman of the Pennsylvania delegation.[2] That meeting was an important early meeting of the Colored Conventions Movement. He later did serve as a recruiting officer helping to enlist black soldiers.[1]
Threats of violence
After the war, Murray frequently gave speeches in the upper South on black education and progress. He also spoke out against the treatment of blacks in the South by former Confederates immediately after the Civil War.[3] He was frequently threatened by whites in the South for his speeches.[1]
On September 30, 1865, he had to flee a mob attack immediately before he was to give a speech at a meeting of black people in Franklin, Tennessee.[4]
On May 11, 1867, Murray, together with James Mullins, G. W. Peabody, and a Captain Garner, gathered to give speeches in Pulaski, Tennessee. Murray's speech was reported to have elicited a mob against him that night, which was halted only by a large guard posted outside of Murray's room, although this was denied a week later in the Pulaski Citizen.[5]