‘Our Women in Journalism’: African-American Women Journalists and the Circulation of News

Abstract

Caroline Bressey’s essay explores how ‘racial prejudice excluded black women from new spaces of expression created by white women’ in the British press (p. 528). It was not until 1900, with the founding of the Pan-African, that there was a British periodical explicitly dedicated to publishing the contributions of black journalists. Thus, the history of black women’s journalism in Britain prior to the turn of the century is largely unknown. This lack of scholarship makes it necessary to take a ‘transatlantic comparative approach’ when surveying an emerging field of inquiry (p. 528). In the United States, there was more explicit discussion of black women’s contributions to the periodical press, as highlighted in I. Garland Penn’s 1891 book, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. This volume not only highlighted the unequal, sometimes hostile environment in which black journalists worked but also provided a key for discovering the names and achievements of a wide range of women writers, including Victoria Earle and Ida B. Wells. These writers spoke out on key political issues, including racism and sexism, contributing to journals as diverse as Our Women and Children (1888–90) and the more radical Free Speech (1892).