It was the first African American newspaper in the state – and possibly in the entirety of the West Coast – and it advocated against racial segregation and for Black civic engagement.
The Mirror of the Times was founded by Jonas H. Townsend and Mifflin Wistar Gibbs in the latter half of the 1850s, with the first edition documented by other local papers as being published on September 12, 1856.
Some sources say 1855, historian J. William Snorgrass gives the date as October 31, 1856,[2] and the United States Library of Congress lists the founding as 1857.
[4] Their advocacy failed in 1857, and they responded that one "cannot expect a class of intelligent people [...] to tamely sit down and quietly submit to a law that denies them any protection and [...] give[s] license and security to thieves and robbers to plunder us".
[4] According to historians James A. Fisher and Philip M. Montesano, it was the first African American newspaper in the state,[12] and Snorgrass writes that it was the first in the entirety of the West Coast.