Samuel Ringgold Ward

Samuel Ringgold Ward (October 17, 1817 – ) was an African American who escaped enslavement to become an abolitionist, newspaper editor, labor leader, and Congregational church minister.

He was author of the influential book Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: his anti-slavery labours in the United States, Canada and England, written after his speeches throughout Britain in 1853. It enabled him to raise funds for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, where many escaped slaves from the USA were arriving in the 1850s.

Early life Samuel Ringgold Ward was born into slavery in 1817 on Maryland's eastern shore, the son of William Ward and Anne. In 1820, Ward and his parents escaped to New Jersey and soon relocated to New York in 1826. Once settled, Ward's parents enrolled him in the African Free School. He was a firm believer in the need for "anti-slavery labors, organizations, agitation, and newspapers" and conscious of the need to keep the papers from being censured, or worse as in the death of Elijah P. Lovejoy, he commenced the study of law.

The first African-American labor leader Freed blacks during the Antebellum also faced discrimination in employment, as black laborers were not welcome in most unions. In response, Frederick Douglass and Ward helped organize the American League of Colored Laborers, the first black American labor union. Assembled on June 13, 1850, in the lecture room of Zion's church in New York City, the League appointed Samuel Ringgold Ward as its first president, Frederick Douglass as its vice-president, and Henry Bibb as its secretary. Although short-lived and stymied by the small number of black workers in cities at the time, the union's goals included the creation of a fund to give loans to black entrepreneurs, the creation of a bank that would provide credit and encourage saving, and an industrial fair. While she was the editor-in-chief, as the first woman publisher in North America, she was afraid of not being taken seriously and originally hid her involvement with the paper by putting Ward's and the Rev. Alexander McArthur's names on the masthead.

"Proclaimed editor of this bold venture, Ward only lent his name to the newspaper to generate interest and subscriptions." where large crowds required the intervention of the police. after spending his last 11 years of life as a minister and farmer in Jamaica.