Women and the Press
Women running newspapers is always big news unless the women were so prominent that the history of the news wouldn’t be complete without them –women like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Abigail Scott Duniway The history of American women and the American press have been linked since the 17th century. There are many notable female figures in the development of publishing and journalism from the colonial period to the twentieth century. Women served as key contributors to the development of the American press and the American press has helped to secure the advancement of American women and further the movement for equality.
Social barriers often curtailed the full integration of women into the world of publishing, editorial, and journalistic writing, Those courageous, talented, and intelligent women were able to surmount the social barriers the prevented the full integration of women into the sphere of editorial/publishing and journalistic writing. The women mentioned in this article contributed to the social and political advancement of America. When the momentous events of their times unfolded, women were there to report on them, while also using this medium for social change and the advancement of women’s rights
Did You Know?
That Elizabeth Glover founded America’s first printing business in 1638, The Cambridge Press? That because she was a woman, needed special permission from New England officials to open a business?
That from 1638 until 1820, more than 25 American women owned and/or operated printers in America?
That Dinah Nuthead secured a grant from the Maryland House of Representatives that earned her the privilege of being the first licensed female printing operator in all the colonies?
That in the 1700s, women edited approximately 16 of the 78 small, family-owned weekly newspapers circulating throughout the British colonies?
That in 1738, following the death of her publisher husband, Elizabeth Timothy became the first female newspaper publisher and editor in America and that Timothy operated the South Carolina Gazette in partnership with founding father Benjamin Franklin, who had owned that press?
That Cornelia Bradford became the publisher of Philadelphia’s American Weekly Mercury in 1742 following the death of her husband?
That Anne Catherine Hoof Green, mother of six (eight others had died), published her husband’s Maryland Gazette during his illness and continued after he died in 1767? And that she asserted a forward-thinking feminist principle when she won the right to be paid the same amount her husband had received for the same work?
That Female journalists were among the first to record, comment on, and publicize the events leading up to the Revolutionary War?
That Mary Katherine Goddard published the Maryland Journal – and in 1775, was appointed as the first female postmaster in America and was the first to reveal to the public who had signed the Declaration of Independence?
That New Hampshire ’s Sarah Josepha Hale, in 1828, moved to Boston and assumed the editorship of America ’s first magazine tailored exclusively for women, Boston Lady’s Magazine? She is most famous for persuading Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving during the midst of the Civil War
That Anne Newport Royall, in 1836, launched her own paper, The Huntress, in which she exposed corruption within the American political bureaucracy?
That Lydia Maria (Francis) Child published her first book at age 22, a work of historical fiction that daringly featured romance between a Native American man and a white woman and she established America ’s first children’s magazine, Juvenile Miscellany, in 1826?.
That Child’s friend, Maria Weston Chapman introduced her own paper, the Non-Resistant, from 1839 to 1842, and in 1844, Chapman co-founded the National Anti-Slavery Standard, which became the standard for abolitionist papers?
That Amelia Bloomer launched her paper, The Lily, and soon became a leading figure in the cause of women’s advancement, famed for publicizing what became known as “bloomers.” She also used her paper to advocate for women’s rights and temperance.
That Jane Grey Swisshelm’s husband was so domineering that he once forbade her to read, but she ended up publishing newspapers in three different cities. The first was in Pittsburgh, where Pennsylvania law granted the income of a married woman to her husband. When Swisshelm’s husband discovered that he could make money from her writing, he allowed her to launch her own paper, the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter. Her passionate editorials on slavery gained a national audience among abolitionists, and in 1850 she became the first woman to sit in the press gallery of the United States Senate?
That Maria Stewart endured many challenges as an African American woman. Briefly educated by a clergyman before she entered domestic service and that Stewart’s passionate journalistic style secured her place in history as the first recorded African-American female journalist?
That Mary Ann Shadd Cary overcame much adversity to become the first black female newspaper publisher in the world?
That a pre-Civil War paper published by a woman was the New Northwest , founded in 1857 by Oregon’s Abigail Scott Duniway?
That the most famous of female journalists in the nation’s capital during the Civil War era was Kate Field?
That Women’s rights leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony used journalism to further their cause? That they eventually met George Francis Train, who offered to finance a newspaper that was titled The Revolution?
That Lucy Stone, who had pioneered feminist ideas prior to Stanton and Anthony, created a more mainstream suffragist agenda in her periodical, Woman’s Journal , featuring writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and Julia Ward Howe?
That the Revolution soon went bankrupt, leaving huge debts that Train refused to pay, but the Journal enjoyed long term success? Woman’s Journal ran monthly from 1870 to 1917. The magazine offered space to many aspiring female journalists and acknowledged the new successes of women in that field.
That Ida B. Wells-Barnett s owned the Memphis Free Speech, in which she led the campaign against lynching? When racists destroyed her newspaper office in 1898 she moved north and wrote for several papers, including Chicago’s Conservator and the New York Age. Her editorials, speeches, and books about the ties between race and sex made her the most radical black woman of her time.
That Mary E. Britton used the print media in the battle for racial equality. Britton worked to desegregate Kentucky railroads, campaigned for gender equality, and joined in the efforts of the suffragist movement?
That Mary Church Terrell was the first black woman in the world to hold a master’s degree at Ohio’s Oberlin College in 1888. Her most famous piece may be “What it Means to Be Colored in the Capital of the United States,” published by The Independent, a widely read magazine aimed at whites, in 1906?
