Wendell Dabney

Wendell Phillips Dabney (November 4, 1865, in Richmond, Virginia – June 3, 1952, in Cincinnati, Ohio) was an influential civil rights organizer, author, and musician as well as a newspaper editor and publisher in Cincinnati, Ohio. He wrote various books and pamphlets including Cincinnati's Colored Citizens.

Career Dabney was born in Richmond, Virginia, months after the end of the American Civil War to former slaves John Marchall Dabney (1824–1900) and Elizabeth Foster (maiden; 1834–1907).

In 1883, Dabney was enrolled in the preparatory department at Oberlin College. While there, he was first violinist at the Oberlin Opera House and was a member of the Cademian Literary Society.

Dabney traveled to Cincinnati in 1894 and met Nellie Foster Jackson, a widow who had two sons, in Indiana. They married in 1897 and settled in Cincinnati where he opened a music studio, became involved in politics, was city paymaster, became the first president of the local chapter of the NAACP, and started the Ohio Enterprise newspaper in 1902. It eventually became The Union which he published until 1952, the year of his death.

He wrote several books and pamphlets including one about leading African Americans in Cincinnati, a biography of his close friend Maggie L. Walker (the first woman to charter a bank in the U.S.), and published a collection of his newspaper writings.