Robert Lincoln Poston
Robert T. Lincoln Poston was an African-American newspaper editor and journalist, who was an activist in Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. He died at sea as he returned from a UNIA mission to Liberia.
Biography
Poston was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He came from a family of journalists and writers. His father, Ephraim Poston, was a teacher, poet and graduate of Roger Williams University in Nashville, Tennessee, who authored Manual on Parliamentary Proceedings, 1905, and Pastoral Poems, 1906. Poston's mother was the former Mollie Cox of Oak Grove, Kentucky. Poston had six siblings: Fred Douglass, Ulysses Grant, Ephraim, Jr., Roberta, Lillian, and Theodore Roosevelt Poston.Poston attended Nashville's Walden University, as well as Howard University. He became a newspaper publisher and editor while in Detroit, Michigan. Later, he contributed poems, literary criticism, and sometimes editorials to the UNIA-ACL's Negro World newspaper. He attained the position of Assistant Secretary-General of the UNIA in 1921 and then was promoted to Secretary General in 1922. His brother Ulysses served as associate editor of the Negro World. Robert and Ulysses were among the co-directors of a play the UNIA dramatic club put on in 1922, entitled "Tallaboo".