Carter, Walter Fitzhugh, George W. Lewis, James E. Robinson, Henry Hucles, Albert V. Norrell, Benjamin A. Graves, James E. Merriweather, Edward A. Randolph, William H. Andrews and Reuben T. Hill.

Gathering in an upper room of a building located near the corner of 3rd and Broad Streets, they pooled their meager resources and started America’s oldest Negro newspaper, which was destined to play an important part in molding the opinions of Negroes in not only Richmond but Virginia as a whole, as well as in the nation.

[2] It was edited first by Edwin Archer Randolph and then by John Mitchell, Jr. from 1884 until his death in 1929.

[5] Farley served on the board of Mitchell Jr.'s Mechanics Savings Bank.

The same year the paper covered the opening of Lincoln Memorial Hall on the campus of Temperance, Industrial, and Collegiate Institute in Claremont, Virginia.