University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XII
NEGRO WOMEN AND THEIR WORK

DURING his travels in Africa Mungo Park,
the famous African explorer, came one day
to Sego, the capitol of the Kingdom of
Bambara, which is situated on the Niger River. Information
was carried to the king of that country that
a white man wished to see him. The king in reply
sent one of his men to inform the explorer that he
could not be received until his business was known.
He was advised to find lodgings for the night in a
neighbouring village. To his great surprise, Park
found no one would admit him. After searching for
a long time he finally sat down, worn out, under the
shade of a tree, where he remained for a whole day
without food.

As night came on the wind arose and a heavy
storm threatened. To the other dangers of the situation
was added the fear that he might be devoured by
the numerous wild beasts that roamed about in that
region. Just as he was preparing to climb into a
tree, however, a woman passed by and perceiving
his weary and dejected appearance, spoke to him
and inquired why he was there. On receiving his

explanation she told him to follow her to her house.
Here he was given food and a mat was spread on
which he lay down to sleep. The women of the
house were meanwhile employed in spinning cotton
and, as they worked, they lightened and enlivened
their labour by songs. One of these songs was
extemporised in honour of their guest. Park described
this music, in the story of his travels, as sweet
and plaintive. The words were:

This incident has been often quoted. Sometimes it
has been referred to as an illustration of the easy and
spontaneous way in which the African people are accustomed
to express their thoughts and feelings in song.
To my mind, however, it seems rather an illustration
of that natural human sympathy which is characteristic
of the women of most races, but particularly
so of Negro women, whether in Africa or elsewhere.

Whatever may be said about the thoughts and the
failings of Negro women, no one, so far as I know,
has ever denied to them this gift of sympathy.
Most people have recognised this quality but nowhere
is the kindness and helpfulness of Negro women

better known and appreciated than among the white
people of the Southern states. The simple-hearted
devotion of the Negro slave women to their masters
and their masters' families was one of the redeeming
features of Negro slavery in the South.

The devotion the slaves sometimes showed to
their masters did not fail to inspire a corresponding
affection in the members of the master's family.
I know of scarcely anything more beautiful than the
tributes I have heard Southern white men and
women pay to those old coloured mammies, who
nursed them as children, shared their childish joys
and sorrows and clung to them through life with an
affection that no change of time or of circumstance
could diminish.

Southern literature is full of stones which illustrate
the strength of this mutual affection, which bound
the young master or the young mistress to his or her
faithful Negro servant. When all other ties which
bound the races together in the South have snapped
assunder, this tie of affection has held fast.

I remember reading a few years ago, shortly after
the Altanta riots, a story written by a young Southern
white man entitled, "Ma'm Linda." The central
theme of this story was the affection of a young white
woman for her coloured "mammy." This affection
was strong enough to resist and finally overcome
attachments that divided the community in which
these two persons are supposed to have lived. It put

an end to an exciting episode which would otherwise
have terminated in a most hideous mob murder.

As an illustration of this devotion of some of the
slave women to their masters and masters' families,
the following incident, which took place in Washington,
District of Columbia, in 1833, is in many
ways typical. A Southern gentleman and his family
were stopping at a Washington hotel when he began
a conversation with some persons who were opposed
to slavery. After they had discussed the question
at some length the slave-holder said to them: "Here
is our servant; she is a slave, and you are at liberty
to persuade her to remain here if you can." The
anti-slavery people sought out the young woman
and informed her that having been brought by her
master into the free states she was, by the law of the
land, a free woman.

The young woman promptly replied that this could
not be so. They talked the matter over thoroughly
and made every effort to show her that she
was free under the existing laws, but she shook her
head, saying that a legal decision did not touch her
case, "for you see," she said, "I promised my mistress
that I would go back with the children."

An attempt was then made to induce her to break
her promise. It was pointed out that a promise
made while she was not free could not be binding,
but the young slave woman refused to look upon it
in that light.

At length one of the abolitionists said: "Is it
possible that you do not wish to be free?"

"Was there ever a slave that did not wish to be
free?" the girl replied. "I long for liberty. I will
get out of slavery, if I can, the day after I return, but
I must go back because I have promised."

Among those slaves who became free, either
through the kindness of their owners or as a result
of their own individual efforts, the number of Negro
women is large. Olmsted, in his "Cotton Kingdom,"
records an instance of a woman who had obtained
her freedom in Virginia, but, being in fear that she
might be reenslaved, fled to Philadelphia. Here
for a time she almost starved. One day a little girl,
who saw her begging on the streets, told her that her
mother wanted some one to do her washing. When
the poor woman applied for this work she was at first
refused, because her prospective employer was
afraid to trust valuable clothing to so unfortunate
appearing a creature. The coloured woman
begged earnestly for the chance to do this work
and finally suggested, if there was any fear she
would not return the clothes, that she should
be locked in a room until the work was completed.
She pleaded so earnestly that she was
allowed to do this work, and in this way began
her life in Philadelphia.

Ten years afterward a white man from her old
home in Virginia happened to be in the city. The

coloured woman recognised him and was overjoyed
to see some one from her old home. She
invited him to come to her house. He did so and
found it a handsomely furnished three-story building.
From the window she pointed out three other houses
in the vicinity which she owned and rented. In
order that her children might be educated she had
employed for them a private instructor. This story
illustrates the manner in which many other Negro
women set to work, after emancipation, to build
homes for themselves and their children.

To the twenty-five million dollars, which it is
estimated the free Negroes accumulated before the
Civil War, the thrift and industry of Negro women
contributed no small amount. Likewise, in the
remarkable amount of property accumulated and
in the home-building which has gone forward for the
last forty years, the women of the Negro race
have ever been foremost.

I have seldom found an instance where a man of
my race has accumulated property, that his wife has
not only urged that a home be bought but has likewise
aided, by extra work, in buying it. In the
struggle for homes and for a substantial family life
the women of no race have shown a greater devotion
and more constant self-denial than have the Negro
women since the masses of the race have become
free. They have engaged in all forms of personal
and domestic service, to supplement the small wages

of their husbands, in order that their children might
be fed, clothed, kept in a school and something laid
aside to pay on a home that more than likely is
being purchased through some building and loan
association. These women have frequently had
almost no learning in books and but little idea of
the settled and traditional regard of mankind for
the sacredness of the home and family ties. When
they began to lay the foundation of the Negro family
life they were simply following the dictates of their
own hearts, and the natural instincts which their
ancestors had brought from Africa. For, contrary
to the general notion, it will be found that family
life, where native institutions have not been broken
down through contact with the white race, is highly
developed among the native Africans.

Some idea of the part that the Negro women are
taking in the economic development of the race may
be gained by considering how large a place they hold
in the field of industry. The statistics show that
coloured women, as wage-earners, do more than their
full share of the work of the race. According to the
census of 1900, for every thousand coloured women
or girls, ten years of age and over, four hundred and
seven were reported as bread-winners. In the case
of white women, on the contrary, the corresponding
number was one hundred and fifty. This means that
about two coloured women out of five and one white
woman out of six work for wages. Of the total

number of Negroes engaged in gainful occupations
in 1900, nearly one-third were women. The proportion
of coloured women to the whole number of
Negroes employed in various groups of occupations
was as follows: in agriculture 27.1 per cent., in the
professions 32.9 per cent., in domestic and personal
service 51.5 per cent., in trade and transportation
1.9 per cent., and in manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits 12 per cent.

In the professional class there were 262 women who
followed the stage as a career; 164 were ministers,
7 dentists, n journalists, 10 lawyers, 25 were
engaged in literary and scientific work, 86 were
artists and teachers of art, 160 physicians, 1,185
musicians and teachers of music, and 13,525 were
school-teachers. In the 140 groups of occupations,
concerning which statistics are given in the census,
coloured women are represented in 133. The
remaining groups were of such a character that men
alone could be employed in them.

It is, perhaps, in the matter of educating their
children that Negro women have made their greatest
sacrifices. I have referred to the freed woman in
Philadelphia, who employed private teachers for
her children. Thousands of Negro women at the
present day are working in the kitchen, over the washtub,
or in the field in order that their children may
have the advantages of an education.

A considerable number of Negro women have distinguished

themselves as teachers of their people.
The fourth school established in the District of
Columbia for coloured children was started by Mrs.
Anne Maria Hall. This school was opened in 1810.
The Costin sisters, Louisa and Martha, from 1823
to 1839, did much to improve the character of the
education of coloured children in the District of
Columbia. Fannie Jackson Coppin, wife of Bishop
Levi J. Coppin, of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, was one of the best known of the women
coloured teachers in the United States. She was
born a slave in Washington, District of Columbia,
in 1837, and was purchased by her aunt. She
graduated with honours from Oberlin College and
began to teach in 1865. From 1869 to 1899 she was
principal of the Institute for Coloured Youth in
Philadelphia. The present principal of that school,
Hugh M. Browne, was her pupil.

The first coloured school-teacher in the public
schools of Philadelphia was Cordelia A. Jennings,
who for a number of years maintained a private
institution for coloured children in the city. In
1864, her school having reached an enrollment of
one hundred and fifty, Miss Jennings decided to
apply for recognition and support as a public school.
Under the regulations that prevailed at that time
she was entitled to do this. The request aroused
considerable discussion, but was finally granted,
and Miss Jennings's school became part of the

public school system, with its former teacher as
principal.

After forty-five years, this school is still in existence.
During this time it has had but two principals; the
present incumbent being Miss Caroline R. Le
Count, who has under her as teachers a number
of those who had previously been her pupils. It
is now well known under the name of the Catto
school, named after Octavius V. Catto, a coloured
schoolmaster, who was killed in the election riot
in October, 1871.

Miss Jennings was born in Poughkeepsie, New
York, in 1843. She graduated from the Institution
of Coloured Youth in Philadelphia. After leaving
Philadelphia, she helped to establish at Louisville,
Kentucky, in 1886, the first coloured high
school in that state. While there she became the
wife of Reverend Joseph S. Attwell. Mr. Attwell,
who was born in Barbadoes, British West Indies,
in 1831, had come to America about 1864, to collect
funds to assist a number of his countrymen to
emigrate to Liberia. He succeeded in collecting
about twenty thousand dollars, and thus became
instrumental in founding the settlement known as
Crozerville, on the Liberian coast.

After the close of the War, Mr. Attwell went
South as agent of the Episcopal Church. He established
mission churches in several cities in Kentucky,
founded a mission church in Petersburg,

Virginia, and was for several years rector of St.
Stephen's Church, Savannah, Georgia. He finally
became rector of St. Philip's Church, where he
died in 1881. St. Philip's Church, New York, is
said to be the richest coloured church in the United
States. It bears, in this respect, somewhat the
same relationship to the other coloured churches
that Trinity Church, New York—from which,
in fact, it is an offshoot—does to the white churches
of the city.

During all this time Mrs. Attwell was active as
a teacher or as a worker in other directions, for
the benefit of her race. She was principal of the
parochial school, at Petersburg, and principal of
the West Broad Street School, at Savannah, and
after her husband's death, in 1881, she worked as a
professional trained nurse. Mrs. Attwell was, for
a time, matron of the Home for Aged and Infirm
Coloured Persons in Philadelphia, and was afterward
in charge of the Industrial Home for Working
Women, at Germantown, Pennsylvania. At
present, 1909, she is living with her son, Ernest T.
Attwell, who is Business Agent of the Tuskegee
Institute.

Mrs. Attwell's mother, Mrs. Mary McFarland
Jennings, was herself a school-teacher. When, in the
summer of 1909, I made an extended trip of observation
through the Southern part of Virginia, I
passed through Kenbridge, Lunenburg County,

where Mrs. Jennings was born, and where, after
the War, she conducted a school for many years
for Freedmen. For four years after the close of
the War, Mrs. Jennings carried on this school at
her own expense and without salary. In 1869,
however, through the intervention of her son-in-law,
Mr. Joseph S. Attwell, the support of the school
was taken over by the Domestic Missionary Society
of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The school
was closed in 1894, but at the time of my visit to
Kenbridge, citizens of the county and former pupils
of the school had purchased land and were preparing
to erect a building for a memorial school
to be established there in memory of Mrs. Jennings
and her work.

Lucy C. Laney, a graduate of Atlanta University,
has done an interesting and important work in education
in Georgia. She was for a time principal of
a public school in Savannah, In 1886, however,
she resigned this position and went to Augusta,
Georgia, in order to establish in that city an industrial
school. Although she started this school almost
unaided, making herself responsible for the support
of the teachers and the expense of the institution,
somehow or other the school has grown steadily
from the time it was started. It has since then
received a liberal support from the Presbyterian
Church and is now the chief school supported by
this denomination south of North Carolina.

In this connection I want to mention the noble
work for the care and education of orphans and
neglected children, which has been carried on for
many years by Dinah Pace at Covington, Georgia.
This is known as the Reed Home and School. After
years of struggle Miss Pace has been able to build up
at Covington, largely through the assistance of her
own pupils and teachers, an industrial school and
orphans' home which is valued at the present time at
about ten thousand dollars. Another of the early
schools established in the way I have described is the
Industrial School at Manassas, Virginia, which was
started by a coloured woman by the name of Jennie
Dean, and is now in charge of Mr. Leslie P. Hill
and his wife, both of whom were formerly teachers
in the institute.

I feel certain that, if I had space to do so, I could
name hundreds of other women who are doing, in
different parts of the South, a work similar to that I
have already mentioned. The names of these women
are frequently scarcely known outside of the communities
in which they live and labour, but the value
of the service they have rendered is greater than can
ever be fully measured or known.

In speaking of the coloured women who have
distinguished themselves as teachers, 1 should not
fail to mention the name of Maria L. Baldwin, a.
coloured woman who is principal of one of the best
graded schools of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in

which she has under her care not less than 600 white
children. Miss Baldwin is one of the best known
women of her race in New England and is frequently
called upon to address teachers' associations in
different parts of New England. At Hampton
Institute, Hampton, Virginia, and at the Institute
for Coloured Youth at Cheyney, Pa., her summer-school
classes have had a large and enthusiastic
attendance.

Negro women have not only been, to a very large
extent, the teachers of their race, both before and
since the War, but several of them played important
parts in the antebellum struggle for freedom. I
have already referred, in another part of this
volume, to the story of Harriet Tubman. Another
woman, who did much to change sentiment in the
United States in regard to slavery, was Sojourner
Truth, one of the most original and best known
of anti-slavery characters.

Sojourner Truth was born about 1775. She was
brought as a child with her parents from Africa and
sold as a slave in the State of New York. She has
described this incident in her own picturesque
language.

"Ye see," she once said, "we was all brought
over from Africa, father an' mother an' I with a lot
more of us. We was sold up an' down, an' hither
an' yon; an' I can 'member, when I was a little thing,
not bigger than this," pointing to her grandson,

"how my ole mammy would sit out o' doors in the
evenin', an' look up at the stars an' groan. She'd
groan an' groan, an' says I to her: 'Mammy, what
makes you groan so?' An' she'd say,' Matter enough,
chile! I'm groanin' to think o' my poor children:
they don't know where I be, an' I don't know where
they be; they looks up at the stars an' I looks up at
the stars, but I can't tell where they be.'"

Sojourner Truth was called Isabella by her
parents. Her parents' names were James and Betsy.
They were owned by Colonel Ardinburgh, who lived
in Hurley, Ulster County, New York. At nine
years of age Isabella was sold to John Nealy, of the
same county, for $100. She thought that her sale
in some way was connected with a flock of sheep.
At any rate, it was the beginning of her trials, for her
former master belonged to the class of people called
Low Dutch, and she had not learned the English
language and no one in the family except Mr. Nealy,
her new master, understood the Dutch language.
This led to frequent misunderstandings and punishments
for Isabella. Her mother had said to her
when she was very small, that when she should grow
up and be sold away from all of her old friends
and had great troubles, that she was to go to God
and he would help her.

"An' says I to her,' Who is God, anyhow, mammy?'
An' says she, "Why chile, you jes look up dar! its
him dat made all dem.'"

At the Nealys' she had many occasions to
remember the words of her mother. Once she was
ordered to go to the barn, where she found her
master with a bundle of rods waiting for her. She
was stripped to her waist and given the most cruel
beating she ever received, and she never knew why
she was so cruelly whipped. Often afterward she
would say: "When I hear 'em tell of whippin'
women on the bare flesh it makes my flesh crawl an'
my very hair rise on my head. Oh, my God, what a
way is this of treatin' human bein's!" And then she
said, "I thought about what my old mammy had
told me about God, an' I thought I had gone into
trouble sure enough, an' I wanted to find God, an'
I heerd somebody tell a story about a man that met
God on the threshing floor, an' I thought, good an'
well, I will have a threshing floor.

"So I went down in the lot an' I thresh down a
place real hard, an' I used to go down there every
day an' pray an' cry with all my might, a-praying
to the Lord to make my massa an' missus better."

The Lord, however, did not answer her prayer
and so she said, "Why, God, maybe you can't."
She then proposed to the Lord that if He would help
her to get away she would be good. "But if You
don't help me I really don't think I can be."

Then she said the Lord told her to get up about
three o'clock in the morning and travel. In the
course of the day she came to the house of some

Quakers, who treated her very kindly, and after
supper they took her into a room in which there
was a bed and told her to sleep there. But instead
of sleeping in the bed she slept under it, and in the
morning, when they came to ask her if she hadn't
been asleep, she said, "Yes, I never slep' better."

"Why, you haven't been in the bed at all," they
exclaimed.

"Laws, you didn' think of sech a thing as my
sleepin' in dat ar bed, did you?" she replied. "I
never heerd o' sech a thing in my life."

The immediate cause of Sojourner's running away
from her master was that, by an act of the New York
Legislature, passed in 1817, all slaves forty years
of age were to be liberated at once, children
on reaching their majority, and the others, in 1827.
Sojourner would have been free on July 4, 1827, but
her master, in consideration of her long years of
faithful service, had promised to give her free
papers a year in advance of the time which the law
had set. He backed out of this agreement, however,
on the plea that during the year her hand
had been disabled; and, therefore, she had not
performed as much work as he had expected.

The next year, after the law had made her free,
Sojourner's former master came to her and invited
her to come back and see his family. When she
reached her master's house, she found, to her great
sorrow, that her son, who was a small boy, although

free according to law, had been carried off by the
daughter of her former mistress to Alabama.
Sojourner vowed that she would have the child back.
She was told to present her case to the Grand
Jury. She had never heard this word, Grand Jury,
before, and thought it meant some sort of a very
important individual. She went to town, therefore,
when the court was in session.

"An' I stood 'round the court-house," she said,
"an' when dey was comin' out I walked right up
to de grandest one I could see and I says to him,
' Sir, be you a Grand Jury?'"

The Grand Jury took up her case, and, in the
course of time, her child was restored to her. Then
an incident took place which illustrates how easily
a Negro woman forgives and forgets, as soon as her
sympathies are touched.

When she found that her child had been unlawfully
taken to Alabama, Sojourner prayed, in the
bitterness of her despair, that the Lord would render
unto her mistress double for all the trouble and
sorrow she had been instrumental in bringing
upon her former slave. Shortly after this Sojourner
happened to be at the home of her former master
when a letter was received, saying that the daughter
in Alabama had been murdered by her husband,
while he was in a drunken frenzy. Sojourner,
feeling that her prayer had been answered, now
repented having called upon the Lord to revenge her

injury. Her account of what then took place has
been reported as follows:

A few years after this Sojourner felt called of
God to labour for the salvation of souls, and the
good of her own people. It was at this time she
decided to change her name. She has described
how this was done:

Sojourner could neither read nor write, but she
soon became widely known in the North, and was
a prominent figure at anti-slavery meetings. One
day she was speaking at one of these meetings when
a man interrupted her and said: "Old woman, do
you think that your talk about slavery does any
good? Do you suppose that people care about
what you say? Why, I don't care any more for
your talk than I do for the bite of a flea."

"Perhaps not," she answered, "but, the Lord
willin', an' I will keep you scratchin'."

About this time an insect known as the weevil
appeared in different parts of the country and
destroyed a large part of the wheat crop. Sojourner,
taking this for her text, made the following point
on the Constitution:

On another occasion Parker Pillsbury, in speaking
at an abolition meeting one Sunday afternoon,
criticised the attitude of churches in regard to
slavery. Just then a furious thunderstorm came up,
and a young Methodist minister arose and interrupted
the speaker, saying, among other things,
that he was fearful God's judgment was about to
fall on him for daring to sit and hear such blasphemy;
he said it almost made his hair rise in terror.

"Chile," said Sojourner in a voice that was heard
above the rain and thunder, "don't be skeered;
you're not goin' to be hurt. I don' spect God ever
hearn tell on you."

On another occasion Sojourner Truth was at a
woman's rights convention, in which the ministers
of the town turned out and took issue against
the ladies. Public sentiment was turned against
them, and for a time the women sat in despair.
Suddenly Sojourner voluntarily stepped to the
front and made a speech which won a complete
victory for the women. This speech contains
so much unlettered eloquence that it seems to
me worth repeating here. As reported, this is
what she said:

Wendell Phillips said that he never knew but one
human being who had the power to bear down a
whole audience by a few simple words, and that person
was Sojourner Truth. As a case in point, he
relates how once, at a public meeting in Boston,
Frederick Douglass was one of the chief speakers.
Douglass described the wrongs of the Negro, and,
as he proceeded, grew more and more excited until
he ended by saying that there was no hope of justice
from the whites, no possible hope except in
their own right arms. It must come to blood.
They must fight for themselves or it would never
be done.

Sitting on the very front seat, facing the platform,
was Sojourner Truth and, in the hush of deep
feeling, as Douglass sat down, she rose and uttered
these words:

The effect was electrical, and thrilled through
the house, changing, as by a flash, the whole feeling
of the audience.

Mr. Story, the sculptor, has attempted to preserve
the spirit of Sojourner Truth and the impression
she made upon him, in his statue called the
Lybian Sybil. After a sojourn of more than one

hundred years on this earth, during which she
always proclaimed the truth, Sojourner Truth
passed to her reward November 26, 1883.

I have ventured to describe the doings and sayings
of this remarkable woman at some length,
because the pithy sayings she uttered, and the
sympathy with suffering that she showed, are typical
of a large class of Negro slave women.

Another woman, of a very different type, who
distinguished herself during slavery days, was
Frances Ellen Watkins. Born in Baltimore, Maryland,
in 1825, she went to school to her uncle,
Reverend William Watkins, who taught a school
in Baltimore for freed coloured children. About
1851 she moved to Ohio and began teaching. A
little later she taught at Little York, Pennsylvania.
It was here that she became acquainted with the
workings of the Underground Railway.

A law had been enacted in Maryland preventing
free people of colour from entering that state, on
pain of being imprisoned and sold into slavery.
A free coloured man, however, who had unwittingly
violated this statute, had been sold into
Georgia, but had escaped by secreting himself
behind a wheel-house of a northbound steamship.
Before he reached freedom, however, he was discovered
and sent back to slavery. This incident,
which came directly under her notice, made a great
impression upon the young coloured school-teacher,

and it was this that finally determined her to devote
her life to the cause of anti-slavery.

After she came to Philadelphia, Miss Watkins
made her home at the station of the Underground
Railway. Here she had abundant opportunity to
see the passengers and hear their tales of hardship
and suffering. She began her career as a public
lecturer in 1854, and, for a year and a half, spoke
in the Eastern states. In 1856 she visited Canada
and lectured in Toronto. From 1856 to 1859 her
work was mainly in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New
York and Ohio.

Not only did she give of her time, but of her
limited means to the cause of freedom. William
Still, in his Underground Railway, gives a number
of instances where she gave him financial aid.
In one case she wrote: "Yesterday I sent you
thirty dollars; my offering is not very large, but if
you need more send me word."

In the fall of 1860 she was married in the city of
Cincinnati to Fenton Harper. She gave up her
public work until the death of her husband, May
23, 1864. She had by this time become known
as an anti-slavery writer in both prose and poetry.
After the close of the War she came South, and
began to work for the uplifting of her people in the
states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and
Mississippi.

To the present generation of coloured people

Mrs. Harper is known principally as a writer. She
has published a number of books of poetry. Her
best known prose work is "Iola Leroy, or the Shadows
Uplifted." On returning from her work in
the South she became a lecturer and writer on temperance,
and for some time had charge of the
W. C. T. U. among the coloured people. She now
makes her home in Philadelphia.

Another somewhat remarkable character is Amanda
Smith, the evangelist. She was born a slave at
Long Green, Maryland, January 23, 1837. Her
father wanted to free himself and his family, so he
worked at night, making brooms and husk mats,
and burning lime. During harvest time he would
work in the grain fields until one and two o'clock
in the morning. In this way he first purchased
himself and then set himself to the task of buying
his wife and five children. After he had succeeded
in this, he moved his family to Pennsylvania.

Amanda taught herself to read by cutting out
large letters from the newspapers, laying them on
the window sill, and getting her mother to make
them into words. When she was eight years old,
she attended a private school for six weeks. Five
miles from her home there was a white school, to
which the few coloured children in the neighbourhood
were allowed to go. They were, however,
placed at a disadvantage, for all the white children
had their full lessons first and then, if any time was

left, the coloured children had a chance. It often
happened, therefore, that after Amanda had walked
the five miles through the deep snow she would
get but one lesson, and that would be while the white
children were taking down their dinner pails and
putting on their wraps. In this way she received
three months' schooling, and this was the end of her
education in the schoolroom.

Amanda joined the Methodist Episcopal Church,
and it was in the great camp-meetings of this church
in the seventies, that her power as an evangelist
was first manifested. In a little book, "Amanda
Smith's Own Story," an extended sketch of her
evangelistic labours are given. In this work she
laboured not only in this country, but also in India,
in Africa, in England and Scotland. Bishop J. M.
Thoburn, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, gives
the following concerning her:

Amanda Smith has now largely given up her
evangelistic labours and conducts the Amanda
Smith Orphans' Home for Coloured Children, at
Harvey, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois.

One of the ablest and best known women lecturers
before the public at the present time is Mary Church
Terrell. Her opportunities and training have been
exceptional. She was born in Tennessee, a daughter
of well-to-do parents, graduated with honours from
Oberlin College in 1884, and finally spent two years
in European study and travel. She was for a time
a teacher of ancient and modern languages at Wilberforce
University, and later, in the high school for
coloured children in Washington, District of Columbia.
At the International Congress of Women in
Berlin, Germany, in 1904, it is said that Mrs. Terrell
had the unique distinction of delivering one speech
in excellent German and another in equally good
French. Mrs. Terrell has been prominent in the work
of the National Association of Coloured Women, of
which she several times has been president.

Another woman who has gained some public
distinction is Mrs. Lucy Thurman, of Jackson,
Michigan, who succeeded Mrs. Francis E. W. Harper
in charge of the work of the W. C. T. U. among
the coloured people.

The most important work done by coloured
women for coloured women has been through the
coloured women's club movement. As early as
1890 there were coloured women's clubs in nearly
every large city where there was any considerable
coloured population. The best known of these
are, perhaps, the Phillis Wheatley Club, of New
Orleans, of which Mrs. Sylvania Williams is the
head, and the Woman's Era Club, of Boston, which
was founded by Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin.
In addition to these clubs there were in existence
at the date of which I have mentioned, the Ellen
Watkins Harper Club, of Jefferson City, Missouri;
the Loyal Union Club, of Brooklyn, New York;
the Ida B. Wells Club, of Chicago, Illinois; the
Sojourner Truth Club, of Providence, Rhode Island;
and, quite as influential as any other, the Woman's
League, of Washington, District of Columbia.

The first National Conference of Coloured Women
was held in Boston in the latter part of July, in 1895.
The person more responsible than any one else for
the first national meeting of coloured women was
Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, the founder and
first president of the Woman's Era Club, of Boston.

Mrs. Ruffin was born in Boston, in 1844. Her
father, John St. Pierre, had the blood of three races
in his veins—namely, French, Indian, and African.
Her mother was an English woman, a native of
Cornwall, England. As a girl Mrs. Ruffin attended
the public schools of Salem, Massachusetts, and
later studied at a private school in New York.
While still a girl in school she married George
Ruffin, of Richmond, Virginia. I have already
referred, in an earlier chapter, to the position which
Mr. Ruffin made for himself in Massachusetts.

Mrs. Ruffin early became interested in the advancement
and welfare of coloured women. During the
period of the "Kansas Exodus," in 1879, she
called together the women of her neighbourhood,
in the West End of Boston, and organised the
Kansas Relief Association. In the work that this
association undertook Mrs. Ruffin was greatly
aided by the counsel of William Lloyd Garrison,
and other prominent anti-slavery people. A large
amount of clothing, old and new, and a considerable
sum of money were collected and forwarded to the
Kansas refugees.

The success of this work of philanthropy lead to
Mrs. Ruffin's connection with the Associated
Charities which, at that time, was just being organised
in Boston. For the next eleven years she
acted as a local visitor for this organisation. She
also became a member of the Country Week Society,

devoting herself to the difficult task of finding places
in the country for coloured children.

The work that Mrs. Ruffin did in this, and other
directions, brought her in contact with many of
the best and most cultivated women of New England.
She became a member of the Massachusetts
Moral Education Association, and of the School
Suffrage Association, of Massachusetts; was for
a number of years one of the members of the executive
board of both these organisations. Later she
became prominent in the Woman's Educational
and Industrial Union, of Boston.

The work Mrs. Ruffin did in these various organisations
did not cause her to lose interest in the work
she had begun to do for the members of her own
race. On the contrary, the experience she obtained
served to make her more useful in all that coloured
women were at this time attempting to do for
themselves.

The Woman's Era Club, of which, as I have said,
Mrs. Ruffin was founder, became one of the most
influential of coloured women's clubs in America.
In the interest of this organisation a paper, The
Woman s Era, was started, and Mrs. Ruffin was
for years its editor. It was as editor of this paper
that she first gained a national reputation. It was
through this paper that, in 1894, she advocated the
holding of a National Conference of Women's Clubs.

The immediate cause of holding this conference,

however, was the publication, by an editor in
Missouri, of an open letter to Mrs. Florence Belgarnie,
of England, who had manifested interest in
the American Negro. In this letter the editor
declared that the coloured women of America had
no sense of virtue and were altogether without character.
As a result of the agitation begun at this
time, about one hundred women representing about
twenty-five clubs, from ten different states, gathered
in Boston, July 29, 1895. As a result of this meeting
it was determined to establish a permanent
organisation. The first officers of the association
were: Mrs. Booker T. Washington, of Tuskegee,
Alabama; Mrs. U. A. Ridley, of Brookline,
Massachusetts; secretary, Mrs. Libbie C. Anthony,
of Jefferson City, Missouri; treasurer, and Mrs.
Victoria E. Matthews, of New York, chairman of
the executive committee.

For the organisation of the National Federation
of Coloured Women's Clubs, Mrs. Ruffin was
largely responsible. Through the paper, of which
she was editor, she has exercised influence on the
coloured women throughout the United States.
Under her influence the Woman's Era Club had a
large part in enlarging what is known as Mrs.
Sharpe's Home School in Liberia, Africa. When
the American Mt. Coffee School Association was
formed in January, 1903, to aid this work, Edward
Everett Hale was elected president and Mrs. Ruffin

vice-president. She is still active in all good work
for the coloured women of her race, not only in New
England but throughout the United States.

Since the organisation of the National Federation
of Coloured Clubs the number of these clubs
has greatly multiplied. In many cases they have
been organised into State Federations.

As an illustration of the sort of work that these
women's clubs do in some of the Southern states, I
may cite the case of the Alabama Federation, of
which I happen to know more than of some of the
other organisations. A few years ago this Alabama
Federation of Coloured Women's Clubs established
a reformatory for boys which is located at Mt. Meigs,
Alabama. During the year 1908, over forty boys
were received at this reformatory from the police
court of Montgomery and Birmingham. During
that year the clubs raised something like $2,283.73,
a large part of which was expended in paying for
and maintaining the reformatory at Mt. Meigs,
to which I have referred.

The work of the women's club at Tuskegee is
typical of what many of the other clubs are doing.
The work of this club is carried on through the
following departments: current literature, music,
prison work, open-air meetings, settlement work,
and temperance work. At the present time this
club is carrying on a Sunday-school in a neglected
part of the Tuskegee town. Sunday meetings are

held in the town jail, more than twenty mothers'
meetings have been organised among the farmers'
wives in the country districts surrounding the town.
These mothers' meetings are maintained under the
supervision of the club. A woman's rest room, for the
benefit of farmers' wives, who usually come into town
on Saturday in large numbers, is maintained in
town. The club has recently taken care of the
family of a man who has been sent to prison for life.
It is paying for the education of a boy and girl of
whom it has had charge since they were small children.
The Tuskegee Town Reading Room,
Library, and Night School, which are now carried
on by the Tuskegee Institute, were first established
by the Tuskegee Woman's Club.

These facts show, it seems to me, that Negro
women, in spite of criticism, are going forward
quietly and unostentatiously doing those things
which develop that character and moral sense in
the members of the race in which it is sometimes
said that Negro women are lacking.