At the close of the nineteenth century, when he purchased the Afro American newspaper, Baltimorean John H. Murphy Sr. launched a crusade of service and advocacy for civil rights and social justice. During its early years the "Afro," as the paper was known, operated as a small family business in which all the Murphys participated.

John Murphy was born a slave on Christmas Day, 1840, in Baltimore City, to Benjamin and Susan (Coby) Murphy. Benjamin Murphy, a whitewasher by trade, may have been a free man, as his paternal grandmother (John's great-grandmother) was an Irish woman named Murphy, from which the family name was taken.

Benjamin and Susan saw that their son John learned to read and write at a school run by a church (public education was unavailable to blacks in antebellum Baltimore). During the Civil War, at age 24, John enlisted in the 30th Regiment (Company G), United States Colored Troops. He began as a bugler but by the war's end had risen to the rank of sergeant. In 1868, shortly after returning home, Murphy married Martha Howard of Montgomery County, Maryland, whose parents were friends of the Murphy family. John and Martha had ten children. John worked as a whitewasher, a trade learned from his father.

Murphy became interested in education, and from his own background understood the role of the church in the schooling of African American children. He worked with the Sunday school at Baltimore's Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and eventually received an appointment as District Sunday School Superintendent for the Hagerstown (Maryland) District AME churches. Having learned the printer's trade, Murphy began publishing the Sunday School Helper, a small booklet, to assist him with his students.

Murphy also established himself as a community leader. He was active in the major Civil War veterans' group, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), and later worked with the National Negro Business League.

As his family grew, Murphy abandoned whitewashing for a more lucrative livelihood. During the late 1800s, he opened a feed store, the Northwestern Family Supply Company (NFSC), on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Biddle Street in West Baltimore, an area fast becoming the heart of Baltimore's black community. He used the NFSC as a platform to resume publishing and purchased a small, weekly newspaper, the Afro American.

The Afro American had been founded in 1892 by Rev. William Moncure Alexander, a Baptist minister and activist clergymen who organized schools for black children and was one of the founders of the early civil rights organization, the Mutual United Brotherhood of Liberty. In 1896, Alexander sold his newspaper to John Murphy and the Northwestern Family Supply Company. Murphy purchased the newspaper and the printing equipment for $200 borrowed from his wife. Although the supply company failed shortly thereafter, the Afro American survived.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Murphy had expanded his newspaper by purchasing a respected press from another activist clergyman. This time the seller was Episcopalian, the Rev. George F. Bragg Jr., and the paper was the Ledger. As a result, Murphy's paper for a brief time called itself the Afro American Ledger before reverting to the Afro American.

By the 1920s, with the Afro American employing nearly 100 people in publishing and printing work, Murphy found time to serve in various civic leadership capacities. He encouraged his children to do the same, for the climate of the times required it. "I have faith in myself, in the ability of my people to succeed in this civilization," John Murphy once wrote, "and in the ultimate justice which will secure them full citizenship in this nation." His son, Carl James Murphy, left a post at Howard University in 1918 to help with operations at the Afro.

When John Murphy died on April 5, 1922, Carl took over as head of the Afro. Nearly all of John Murphy's other children took on important management roles as well. Murphy has been recognized by various gestures since his death, including a World War II-era Liberty ship named in his honor, and a Baltimore City public school.

Farrar, Hayward. The Baltimore Afro-American, 1892-1950. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.