David Jenkins (Madison County)
State House: 1876
Born: 1811 in Lynchburg, VA
Died: September 4, 1876 in Canton, MS
Founder and editor of the Palladium of Liberty newspaper. He married Lucinda Snead in 1858 and was listed on the 1840, 1850, 1860, and 1870 census in Columbus, Ohio, as a painter and journeyman paper hanger. Jenkins relocated to Mississippi at some point in the 1870s and died in Canton in 1876. By the time of the 1880 census, Lucinda had moved back to Columbus.
“David Jenkins – The Old Wheel-horse. Many have labored more famously than he for his race, but none more faithfully… At a time when several of the members of this Club were yet unborn, and others were infants, David Jenkins commenced working with an earnest, unselfish zeal for his people. At first little could be done in the way of politics; but there were schools to be established and maintained, the underground railroad was in full blast, and demanded conductors who had nerve and heart. In such work Mr. Jenkins won himself an honorable fame among his people… His labors took a wider range than this. At every Convention of colored men, State or National, he was present, aiding, by counsel and purse, in the organization of the people. In hundreds of addresses he sought to inspire the colored people with hope and self-respect; he criticised the actions of the enemies of liberty; he circulated petitions for the abolition of slavery, and the repeal of unjust laws which had been enacted to sustain it, and in many other ways sought to improve the condition of his people. In 1838 he established the Palladium of Liberty, the first newspaper enterprise of the colored people of Ohio, and among the first in the country.”
(The Cincinnati Enquirer, February 13, 1872)
Links:
Black Abolitionist Archive: David Jenkins
Address of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio
The Palladium of Liberty: Editors & Agents
This page was last updated on December 12, 2025.