Members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family — which owns The New York Times Company — were slaveowners and held sympathetic views towards the Confederacy in the 19th century, an opinion column in the New York Post concluded.
The Ochs-Sulzberger family’s reported connection to slavery and the Confederacy is linked to Adolph Ochs and his mother Bertha Levy Ochs, according to the New York Post. Ochs initiated the family’s ownership of the Times after he bought the paper in 1893. The maternal side of his family reportedly owned slaves and participated in the Civil War.
A re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg (John Moore/Getty Images)
Bertha Levy Ochs, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, lived with her paternal uncle John Mayer in Natchez, Mississippi for several years prior to the Civil War. A family tree compiled around 70 years ago revealed that Mayer had changed his surname from Levy, the New York Post reported.
Mayer also reportedly owned five slaves, according to a slave schedule from the 1860 Census published on Ancestry.com. The names of the slaves are not included, but the census reported three women and two men between the ages of 23 and 70 in Mayer’s possession.
Historian and author Robert Rosen told the New York Post it would have been unusual if the Mayer family did not own slaves considering the family’s wealth and the fact that Mayer and his wife had 14 children. (RELATED: National Archives Finds Original Copy Of Juneteenth Order)
Bertha Levy Ochs, meanwhile, was a charter member of the Daughters of the Confederacy’s Stewart chapter and a Confederate flag had been draped across her coffin following her death in 1908, according to Rosen’s 2000 book The Jewish Confederates.
A Confederate Navy jack flag sits at the base of Confederate Mound, a memorial to more than 4,000 Confederate prisoners of war (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
She was described in a 1999 biography of the Ochs-Sulzberger families as being determined to preserve “the South’s peculiar institution” of slavery, according to the New York Post. One of her brothers, Oscar Levy, reportedly fought alongside two of his cousins in Mississippi during the Civil War.
Her son Adolph Ochs was also the owner of the Chattanooga Times by the time he acquired The New York Times in 1893. After acquiring the Chattanooga paper in 1879, Ochs stated that he intended to move the paper “in line with the conservative democracy of the South,” the New York Post reported.
Adolph Ochs was born on this date March 12 in 1858. Photo source: The Cyclopædia of American Biography. #OTD pic.twitter.com/VcA4PbOIhM
— Jeffrey Guterman (@JeffreyGuterman) March 12, 2020
Ochs brought his Confederate sympathies to the Times as well, as an article published December 6, 1908 commemorating the 100-year anniversary of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ birth praised him as a “great Southern leader.” (RELATED: Protesters Chant ‘F*** That Statue’ After They Tear Down Jefferson Davis Statue)
An editorial published in the Times May 10, 1900 criticized the Republican Party for supporting voting rights for black Americans through the Fifteenth Amendment and warned about the “horrors of negro rule,” further investigation by The National Pulse revealed.
“The Republican Party committed a great public crime when it gave the right of suffrage to the blacks,” the Times editorial reads. The paper also stated it would be a wise decision to create “barriers against negro suffrage.”
Ochs’ sympathies for the Confederacy went beyond the newsroom as he reportedly financed the construction of memorials to Confederate leaders, according to The National Pulse. He reportedly donated $31,000 in current dollar value to the Stone Mountain Memorial in Georgia which commemorates President Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Stonewall Jackson.
Ochs mentioned in a 1924 letter that his donation was in recognition of his mother who died 16 year prior, the New York Post reported. “Robert E. Lee was her idol,” Ochs wrote of Bertha Levy Ochs.
Black Lives Matter protesters gather at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
The revelation that members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family both practiced slavery and promoted pro-Confederate sympathies — including in The New York Times — contrasts the Times’ current journalistic endeavors on race relations in the United States.
The publication’s 1619 Project “aims to reframe the country’s history” by asserting that America’s true founding was in 1619 when the practice of slavery first came to Britain’s North American colonies. The project has been criticized by historians but lead writer Nikole Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for it earlier this year.
The New York Times published an opinion piece in June stating George Washington “should not be honored with monuments in public spaces” because he owned slaves. (RELATED: NYT Writer Owns Up To Writing Racist Screed In 1995, Refuses To Apologize)
A February article published in the Times stated that the “hidden history of slavery” surrounds us. Given the history of the Ochs-Sulzberger family it would seem that this hidden history surrounds The New York Times as well.