The heredity and environment of women has for many ages circumscribed
them to a certain routine both of work and play. In this century,
sometimes called the “Nineteenth Century,” but often the “Women’s
Century,” there has been a yielding of the barriers that surround her
life. In the school, the church, the state, her value as a co-operative
is being widely discussed. The co-education of the sexes, the higher
education of woman, has given to her life a strong impetus in the line
of literary effort. Perhaps this can be more strongly felt in the
profession of journalism than in any other. On every hand journals
published by women and for women are multiplying. The corps of lady
writers employed on most of our popular magazines and papers is quite
as large as the male contingent and often more popular if not as
scholarly. We can realize what this generation would have lost if the
cry of “blue stocking” had checked the ambition of our present women
writers. The women of our race have become vitalized by the strong
literary current that surrounds them. The number is daily increasing
of those who write commendably readable articles for various journals
published by the race. There was a day when an Afro-American woman
of the greatest refinement and culture could aspire no higher than
the dressmaker’s art, or later who would rise higher in the scale
could be a teacher, and there the top round of higher employment was
reached. But we have fallen on brighter days, we retain largely the old
employments and have added to this literary work and its special line
of journalistic effort.
New lines are being marked out by us; notice “Aunt Lindy” and “Dr.
Sevier” in the _Review_. The success of this line of effort is assured
and we hail it with joy. Our women have a great work to do in this
generation; the ones who walked before us could not do it, they had no
education. The ones who come after us will expect to walk in pleasant
paths of our marking out. Journalism offers many inducements, it
gives to a great extent work at home; sex and race are no bar, often
they need not be known; literary work never employs all one’s time,
for we cannot write as we would wash dishes. Again, our quickness of
perception, tact, intuition, help to guide us to the popular taste; her
ingenuity, the enthusiasm woman has for all she attempts, are in her
favor. Again, we have come on the world of action in a century replete
with mechanical means for increasing efficiency; woman suffrage is
about to dawn. Our men are too much hampered by their contentions with
their white brothers to afford to stop and fight their black sisters,
so we slip in and glide along quietly. We are out of the thick of the
fight. Lookers-on in Venice, we have time to think over our thoughts,
and carry out our purposes; we have everything to encourage us in
this line of effort, and so far I have found nothing to discourage an
earnest worker. All who will do good work can get a hearing in our best
Afro-American journals. In the large cities especially of the North
we have here and there found openings on white journals. More will
come as more are prepared to fill them and when it will have become no
novelty to be dreaded by editor or fellow-reporters. To women starting
in literary work I would say, Write upon the subjects that lie nearest
your heart; by that means you will be most likely to convince others.
Be original in title, conception and plan. Read and study continuously.
Study the style of articles, of journals. Discuss methods with those
who are able to give advice. Every branch of life-work is now being
divided into special lines and the literary field shares in the plan
marked out by other lines of work; so much is this the case that the
name of Cable, or Tourgee, or Haygood, suggests at once southern Negro
life; Edward Atkinsson, food; Prof. Shaler, scientific research, and
so on ad infinitum. Our literati would do well to follow the same
plan; it may have its disadvantages, but it certainly has also its
advantages. To those who aspire to become journalists we only give
the old rule, enter the office, begin at the lowest round and try to
learn each department of work well. Be thankful for suggestions and
criticism, make friends, choose if possible your editor, your paper, be
loyal to both, work for the interest of both. See that your own paper
gets the best, the latest news. If a new idea comes to you, even if
it is out of your line of work, talk over it with him. Study papers,
from the design at the top, the headings, the advertisements, up to the
editorials. Have an intelligent comprehension of every department of
work on the paper. As a reporter I believe a lady has the advantage of
the masculine reporter in many respects. She can gain more readily as
an interviewer access to both sexes. Women know best how to deal with
women and the inborn chivalry of a gentleman leads him to grant her
request when a man might have been repulsed without compunction. In
seven years’ experience as an interviewer on two white papers I have
never met with a refusal from either sex or race. If at first for some
reason they declined, eventually I gained my point. Another pleasant
feature of this as of all other employment is its comradeship; one can
always find a helper in a fellow-worker. I have received some such
kind, helpful letters; one from Mrs. Marion McBride, President of the
New England Women’s Press Association comes to my mind; another from
Mrs. Henry Highland Garnet of N. Y. Here and there pleasant tokens of
esteem and co-operation greet me. I have been thanked heartily in many
strange places, by many new and unaccustomed voices, for helpful words
spoken in the long ago. To the women of my race, the daughters of an
oppressed people, I say a bright future awaits you. Let us each try to
be a lamp in the pathway of the co-laborer, a guide to the footsteps
of the generation that must follow. Let us make, if we can, the rough
places smooth; let us write naught that need cause a blush to rise
to our cheek even in old age. Let us feel the magnitude of the work,
its vast possibilities for good or ill. Let us strive ever not to be
famous, but to be wisely helpful, leaders and guides for those who look
eagerly for the daily or weekly feast that we set before them.
Doing this, our reward must surely come. And when at some future day
we shall desire to start a women’s journal, by our women, for our
women, we will have built up for ourselves a bulwark of strength; we
will be able to lead well because we have learned to follow. May these
few words, allied to the bright and shining examples of such women as
Mrs. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. Fanny Jackson Coppin, Mrs.
Sara M. Douglass, and other consistent, industrious workers, serve as
a stimulus to some one who is strong of will, but weak of purpose, or
to another whose aspiration is to become a journalist, but who fears to
launch her little bark on the waves of its tempestuous sea.
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