Our Women in Journalism

From Gertrude Bustill Mossell, The Work of the Afro-American Woman (1908).

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 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 the 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 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 the 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 shared in the plan marked out by other lines of work; so much is this...