The Richmond Planet was founded in 1883 by thirteen former slaves, in the city of Richmond, Virginia. This four page (sometimes eight page) weekly was an independent newspaper that focused on African American civil rights in the post-Reconstruction era. Agitation for voting rights, protests against lynching and denunciations of the Ku Klux Klan filled the paper's pages. John Mitchell, Jr., formerly the Richmond correspondent to the New York Freeman,took over as the Planet's editor in 1884. Politically independent, the paper continued publication through 1938, when it merged with the Afro-American.