Thomas Morris Chester: The Lone Black Reporter of the Civil War

Born 1834, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The son of an escaped slave and oyster salesman, Chester’s childhood was relatively secure and very progressive. Attending college in Pittsburgh, he first became interested in the concept of African colonization and traveled back and forth between Liberia and the U.S. after graduation in 1853. Liberia was actually where Chester got his first taste of journalism, writing and editing for the “Star of Liberia” in Monrovia, the nation’s capitol.

The escalation of the Civil War prompted Chester to move back and join the Union efforts; he helped recruit and raise the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Colored troops regiments. Later, he would lead two Black regiments into battle for the famous Gettysburg Campaign in 1863. This was the first time Pennsylvania issued weapons to African-Americans.

From August 1864 to the end of the Civil War, Chester worked as a war correspondent for the Philadelphia Press, becoming the first Black war correspondent working for a major daily paper.

After the end of the war, Chester moved to England to study law and went on to become England’s first Black barrister (lawyer). During the 1870s, Chester moved back to the U.S. and settled in Louisiana, working as the brigadier general of the militia and also the superintendent of schools in 1875.

In 1892 embittered by Jim Crow laws and in ill health, he returned to his hometown, where he died of a heart attack a year later. He was buried in a segregated cemetery in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Newseum, Sharon Shahid
Image: Cheyney University of Pennsylvania