Charles Alexander
Charles Alexander was an influential African American journalist and editor born in 1868 in Natchez, Mississippi, and raised in New London, Connecticut. His career spanned various newspapers and magazines, beginning with his move to Boston in 1894, where he worked for the Reflector. Following its closure, he launched the Monthly Review, though it too was short-lived. Alexander later taught printing in Alabama and coauthored the book "Under Fire with the Tenth U.S. Cavalry," detailing the contributions of a black regiment in historical conflicts. In 1904, he became the editor of the Colored Citizen, a newspaper supported by Booker T. Washington, but it struggled to sustain itself and lasted less than a year. He subsequently founded Alexander's Magazine, focusing on the progress of African Americans in the U.S. Despite the magazine's eventual failure in 1909, Alexander's prolific writing on various topics cemented his role as a vital figure in African American journalism. He continued his career in Los Angeles, editing local newspapers and publishing his own poetry, all of which contributed to the cultural groundwork for the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s.
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Charles Alexander
Writer
- Born: March 7, 1868
- Birthplace: Natchez, Mississippi
- Died: September 5, 1923
- Place of death: Los Angeles, California
Biography
Charles Alexander was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1868 but was raised in New London, Connecticut, and educated in that city’s public schools. He was married to Fanny Worthington in 1897. His professional life revolved around a series of African American newspapers and magazines in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
In 1894, Alexander had moved to Boston to work on the Reflector. When that newspaper folded, Alexander started a magazine called Monthly Review, which he edited until it failed in 1896. Alexander then moved to Alabama and taught printing, first at the Alabama Agricultural College and then at the Tuskegee Institute. While living in Huntsville, Alexander coauthored Under Fire with the Tenth U.S. Cavalry, a book that told the story of a black regiment that had fought in the Indian campaigns in the west and also in the Spanish American War. In the same year, he published One Hundred Distinguished Leaders, a biographical dictionary of black achievement.
In 1904, the famous black educator and leader Booker T. Washington invited Alexander back to Boston to edit Colored Citizen, a newspaper Washington sponsored. As with many such publications at this time, the paper lacked adequate financial support and readership, and lasted less than a year under Alexander’s guidance. He immediately launched Alexander’s Magazine in its place, however, a journal that promised—as its masthead proclaimed—to cover “the moral, intellectual, commercial, and industrial improvement of the Negro Race in the United States.” Alexander himself was probably the most prolific writer in the magazine, producing editorials, book reviews, poetry, and such feature articles as “Negro Journalism” (March, 1906) and “Down in Mississippi” (1909). He guided the magazine through a special tribute to the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and a celebration of the twenty-fifth year of the Tuskegee Institute.
When the magazine failed in 1909, Alexander tried politics, but lost in runs for the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He soon moved to Los Angeles, where he edited the Citizens Advocate newspaper and then the Los Angeles Post. He also lectured widely in California on the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and published his own poetry in the Los Angeles Times and other journals. In 1914, he published Battles and Victories of Allen Allensworth, the story of a distinguished black lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. Alexander is clearly one of the most important African American editors and journalists in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and his work helped to lay the groundwork for the black renaissance in the arts that occurred in the 1920’s.