An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 11/22/2020
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"Though Race Literature be founded upon the traditionary history of a people, yet its fullest and largest development ought not to be circumscribed by the narrow limits of race or creed, for the simple reason that literature in its loftiest development reaches out to the utmost limits of soul enlargement and outstrips all earthly limitations."
Civic leader, missionary, author, and journalist Victoria Earle Matthews seemed almost predestined to challenge the status quo. Born in 1861 Georgia to slave Caroline Smith and an unnamed father who was believed to be the plantation's master, Victoria's mother fled the state during the Civil War but returned after Emancipation to regain custody of her, and her sister. The family ultimately moved to New York City, and while working a drudgerous low-paying day job, Victoria still managed to surreptitiously pursue an education in the library after hours. Eventually she became a journalist, and building on a career writing for the New York Globe and The Sunday Mercury, embarked on a series of novels that captured the mood (and the anguish) of African Americans.
From a literary standpoint, 1893's "Aunt Lindy" was mostly a moral dramatization (about a freed slave grappling with the idea of whether or not to murder her former master); but it was Matthews' 1895 essay "The Value of Race Literature" that appeared to unleash a flood of stories about --and by-- Black women ...almost as if the essay was granting permission for this narrative standpoint to finally emerge onto the literary scene.
Perhaps most significantly was Matthews' "behind-the-scenes" work --in 1895 Matthews helped found the National Federation of Afro-American Women, and a year later played a key role in merging this group with the National Colored Women's League to become the National Association of Colored Women (see biographies of Mary Church Terrell, Lesson #29 in this series; and Ida B. Wells, Lesson #33 in this series).
Next page - Lesson 57: Juanita Jewel Shanks Craft