Timothy Thomas Fortune was an American speaker, civil rights activist, journalist, author, editor, and publisher. He was the very important editor of The New York Age, the nation's leading black newspaper, as well as the black community's foremost economist. He was a longtime adviser to Booker T. Washington and edited his first autobiography, The Story of My Life and Work. Fortune's concept of violent activism for black people's rights helped lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement. Timothy Thomas Fortune was born into slavery in Marianna, Jackson County, Florida, to Emanuel Fortune and Sarah Jane Fortune, and received his early education at Marianna's first school for African Americans following the Civil War. Timothy Thomas Fortune was born into slavery in Marianna, Jackson County, Florida, to Emanuel Fortune and Sarah Jane Fortune, and received his early education at Marianna's first school for African Americans following the Civil War. His family relocated to Jacksonville, where he attended Edwin M. Stanton School (the precursor of Stanton College Preparatory School). He worked as a page in the state senate and as an apprentice printer at a Jacksonville newspaper while his father, Emanuel, was a Reconstruction politician in Florida. Fortune formerly worked for the Marianna Courier and, later, the Jacksonville Daily-Times Union.
