| Jesse Duke | |
| Birth Name: | Jesse Chisholm Duke |
| Birth Date: | 7 March 1853 |
| Birth Place: | Cahaba, Alabama, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Nationality: | American |
| Other Names: | J. C. Duke |
| Occupation: | Editor, publisher, activist |
Jesse Chisholm Duke (March 7, 1853 – January 23, 1916) was a religious and political leader in Alabama who established and edited the Baptist Montgomery Herald newspaper and served as a Selma University trustee.[1] He advocated for civil rights for African Americans.[2]
Duke was born into slavery in March 1853 and raised on a plantation near Cahaba, Alabama. At the age of 10 he was hired as a servant to a family of French refugees. The eldest daughter taught school, giving Jesse his first education.[3] In the 1870s he owned a grocery store and was a teacher. He established the Herald in the 1880s.[4] Duke was an influential political leader among Republicans.
He wrote an anti-lynching article that called out white journalists for turning a blind to the children fathered by white men and African American women, drawing a strong reaction that instigated Duke fleeing with his family to Pine Bluff, Arkansas where he started another newspaper. Local whites held a public meeting and condemned him as a vile and dangerous character after he published a statement about the growing appreciation a white "Juliet" could have for a "colored Romeo".[5]
Duke condemned biased all-white juries and the convict labor system it supplied.[6] He corresponded with Booker T. Washington about relocating the Lincoln School in Marion to Montgomery.[7]
He led the Alabama Colored Press Association during its establishment.[8]
Architect and engineer Charles Sumner Duke (1879–1952) was his son.[9]
The Library of Congress has the Montgomery Herald 1886 to 1887 in its collection.[10]