John Brown Russwurm was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica on October 1^st, 1799. He was a “mulatto,” the son of an English merchant father and an unknown black slave mother. The family stayed in Jamaica until 1807, when Russwurm was sent to Quebec. In 1812, Russwurm and his father moved to Portland, Maine, where the elder Russwurm married widow Susan Blanchard in 1813. Blanchard insisted her husband acknowledge John Brown, as he was once known, and grant him his surname, which he did. "John Brown Russwurm" lived with his father, stepmother, and her children from a previous marriage accepted as part of the family. The elder Russwurm died in 1815, but his son stayed close to his stepmother, even after she remarried. Russwurm attended Hebron Academy in Maine, focusing on his studies to finish his education. Graduating in his early twenties, he taught at an African-American school in Boston. Several years later, he relocated to Maine to live with his stepmother and her new husband. They helped Russwurm pay for further education when he enrolled in Bowdoin College in 1824. Upon graduation in 1826, Russwurm became the first African American to graduate from Bowdoin College and third African-American to graduate from an American college.

In 1827, Russwurm, along with co-editor Samuel Cornish, published an abolitionist newspaper called Freedom’s Journal. "Freedom’s Journal" was the first African-American owned and operated newspaper in the United States. Cornish and Russwurm ran the newspaper out of New York City. The editors declared in the inaugural issue, on March 16^th 1827, that they wanted to circulate useful knowledge of every kind among an estimated 500,000 free persons of color, to bring about their moral, religious, civil, and literary improvement, and, most important of all, to plead their cause, including their civil rights, to the public. They emphasized the value of education and self-help. Although they vowed that the journal would not become the advocate of any partial views either in politics or in religion, it spoke clearly for the abolition of slavery in the United States and opposed the budding movement to colonize freed blacks in Africa.

Weekly issues of "Freedom’s Journal" carried a variety of material: poetry, letters of explorers and others in Africa, information on the status of slaves in slaveholding states, legislation pending or passed in states that affected blacks, notices of job openings, and personal news such as marriages and obituaries. Advertisements for adult education classes appeared frequently and even Russwurm appealed for subscribers to attend an evening school in lower New York where he taught reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, and geography. Six months after Cornish and Russwurm started the newspaper, Cornish resigned as an editor, supposedly in order to return to the ministry and to promote free black schools, but more likely because he disagreed with Russwurm's new views on African colonization. Russwurm was becoming convinced that blacks could not achieve equality with whites in the United States and that going back to Africa was their best hope. In one of his last editorials, Russwurm wrote that “the universal emancipation so ardently desired by us and by all our friends, can never take place unless some door is opened whereby the emancipated may be removed as fast as they drop their galling chains, to some other land besides the free states.” The final issue of the journal appeared on March 28^th 1829, whereupon, two months later, Cornish resumed its editorship under a new title, "The Rights of All." His vigorous denunciation of the colonization movement, in fact, represented the majority view among slaves and free blacks.

Upon emigrating to Liberia, Russwurm started work as the colonial secretary for the American Colonization Society. The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 to assist free black people in emigrating to Africa. The founder of the ACS was Reverend Robert Finley, a Presbyterian minister from Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Finley, a white man, believed that black people would never be able to fully integrate into American society and that they would only be able to fulfill their potential as human beings in Africa, the “land of their fathers.” He saw colonization as something that would benefit African Americans as well as Africans alike through the spreading of Christianity to Africa. He also thought that it would prompt a gradual end to slavery.

Russwurm served as the secretary for the ACS from 1830 to 1834. He worked as the editor of the "Liberia Herald," but resigned this post in 1835 to protest America's colonization policies. Russwurm also served as the superintendent of education in Liberia's capital, Monrovia.

In 1836, he became the first black governor of Maryland in Africa, a colony that later became part of Liberia in 1857. He held this post until his death in 1851. He continued to encourage immigration of African Americans to the Republic of Maryland, and supported its development of agriculture and trade. During his time in Liberia, Russwurm learned several of the native languages. He encouraged trade and diplomatic relations with neighboring countries as well as with European nations.

John Russwurm was a man ahead of his time. Centuries before scholars began debating issues like the social construction of race, Russwurm understood how white people used media to create and perpetuate destructive stereotypes of people of color. He set out to challenge this practice, via a brand new form of media: African American journalism. “We wish to plead our own case,” Russwurm wrote. “Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentation in things which concern us dearly.” Russwurm and Cornish created the paper to give African Americans pride in their communities as well as portray black people in a positive light.