Black Women Made Visible: Timely Reissue of 1893 Book

Women of Distinction: Remarkable in Works, Invincible in Character

“Woman’s role has ever been that of self-sacrifice.” Layer onto the straitjacket of sex the color of her skin, Black women are “pursued by a monster prejudice whose voracious appetite is appeased only when they have been reduced to abject servitude,” writes Josephine Turpin Washington in her 1893 introduction to Women of Distinction.

The degraded position of Black women provides the context for this monumental set of narratives of over 90 accomplished Black American women, published less than thirty years after the Civil War. This book should take its rightful place on the shelves of American history, written as it was before women even had the right to vote and Black men had only just gained it.

In its twin ambition to inspire young Black women and, more broadly, to “hasten the time when our work may be criticized as that of human beings, and neither as that of colored women nor as that of women,” this path-breaking book shows us that our full humanity as individuals is shaped by our multiple identities, the circumstances of our birth, society’s treatment of us, and how we play or fold the hand we are dealt.

Dr. Lawson Scruggs, described as a “worthy and zealous knight” in his advocacy for Black women by Ms. Turpin Washington, compiled or wrote the profiles of Women of Distinction, reissued 127 years after its original release by his grandchildren in conjunction with Evanston-based publisher of books by people of African descent, Path Press, Inc.. The book brings to light an extraordinary group of “noble heroines,” most of whom were born into slavery, lost at least one parent at a young age, and had to take care of family members while trying to eke out an education.

Women of Distinction reissued 127 years after its original release by the author’s grandchildren with Path Press, one of the first black-owned book publishers.
Available now: pathpressinc.com 847.492.0177

Some are well-known like Phyllis Wheatley, Harriet Tubman (in her 70s and still the “Moses of her people,” sheltering and caring for “lame and halt and blind widows, orphans and wayfarers” in a modest house in Auburn, NY), Sojourner Truth, and a young Ida B. Wells. But each in her own way took charge of her life. They emerged as teachers, journalists, poets, musicians, missionaries, entrepreneurs, and in one case, Ida Gray, the only Black female dentist. The photographs prefacing most of the profiles contribute to the reader’s engagement.

Most were married, and those who remained single did not sit with “folded hands” but earned their living. This is no small feat for Black women of that time. Mrs. N.A.R. Leslie, for one, is noted as a “great woman” not only for her work as a music educator throughout the south, but, as a widow, for having “saved her earnings and in possession of considerable property and cash.”

All of them championed civil rights. As Dr. Scruggs writes in his introduction, “the womanhood of the race has suffered great and unmerited injustice.” At the age of three or four, Mary E. Harper, B.E., stood on a chair before audiences in her Baltimore home intoning, “The negroes shall be free.”

Today’s reader is immersed in excitement that followed the Civil War, with the burgeoning of Black American institutions, especially schools, made possible by Reconstruction and white northern philanthropy. That year’s World’s Fair in Chicago reflected that optimism made possible by freedom. But at the same time, white-led institutions entrenched new ways to ensure their continued domination over Black Americans was pointed out frequently in the book.

In one poignant example, the Ladies of the Fisk Jubilee Singers were ejected from railway waiting areas and denied hotel rooms even though they sang for packed audiences throughout the world including the President of the United States and the Queen of England.

So egregious was the prejudice in Louisville that one railroad superintendent, presumably white, “placed at their disposal and for their own special comfort an extra coach” every time the singers “traveled that road.” Only five years after the publication of Women of Distinction, the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision enshrined the legitimacy of “separate but equal” facilities for Blacks and whites, the law of the land until the Court reversed it with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, declaring that “segregation is inherently unequal.”

Within this context of enforced segregation, it was essential that a Black woman be able to maintain her integrity. Ada Cooper of New York City, born in 1861, was a noted “elocutionist” and poet who supported herself by teaching. She was asked to read a poem on “emancipation celebration day” but because of her poverty, had to borrow a dress. She was determined not to have to read a “borrowed poem” as well and set to work to write her own poem. Her original poem "so stirred the people,” writes Lawson, “that it yet lives in the memory of many who heard it.”

Another Ada, Ada Hand, made her own clothes (“dresses, cloaks, underclothing”) even while teaching 100 school children a day. We learn that she was orphaned at age 9, restricted by an imperious brother-in-law, and struggled with hunger while determined nonetheless to go to school.

“I too can make a stone man,” declared Edmonia Lewis in beholding a statue of Benjamin Franklin in Boston. So single-minded was she to become an artist that abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison helped her get the education she needed to become one of the most celebrated American sculptors.

It is hard to read this book and not reflect on the fact that today a Black woman, Kamala Harris, is on the Vice Presidential ticket. Indeed, Josephine Turpin Washington in her introduction augurs that the best is yet to come: “Let us not use extravagant words of commendation, lest we have left no fit terms of praise for the woman of our future who is hopefully prophesied by the achievements of her progenitors.”