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Female Firsts: Delilah Beasley · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: And Samantha.
• 0:07
  Speaker 3: And welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. And it's time for another edition of Female First,
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: which means we are once again joined by the tremendous,
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: the trailblazing, Eves.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Eves. Hello. I'm trailblazing now. Okay. I think so.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Every time we talk to you, you're up to something like,
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: That's a thing you can do?
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I'll take it. Yes.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Well, we have had some technical difficulties, so we didn't
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: get a chance to check in with you before we
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: started recording.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: How have you been, Yves? Great. I have been good.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I have been doing a lot of cool things in
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the city. I recently moved into a studio, a new
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: studio that I have that's an art and media production
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and yoga studio. It is such a shape-shifting being. I
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: consider it a multi- a multi-passionate, just like I am.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: The studio is an outgrowth of my very weird and
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: all over the place mind. So it's been a process
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of getting that in the state that I want to be,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: in the state that I want it to be in.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: But I mean, it's constantly, I'm just considering it constantly
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: in a state of being that I want it to
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: be in. I'm embracing it in all of its phases. Yeah,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: so everything's, good over here we're moving into spring while
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: y'all over there in that hemisphere are moving into fall
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and this means I keep getting served this is random
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: but this means I keep getting served like fall recipes
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and I'm like damn.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: It fall recipes are pretty good the fall recipes look
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: so good but like I'm not in that mood right
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: now I need something a little less cozy and dense.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But overall, things are good. That's awesome.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: I want to hear more about the studio. Like, every
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: time I want to check in and see what phase
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: it is.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Next time I'll update you on where we are. Excellent. Excellent.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: You know, I was thinking, and you have just demonstrated
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: right before we started recording and in that explanation, you
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: have quite the way with words, Yves.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Yes. Hmm.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: So I was wondering, before we get into this topic
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: I'm really excited to talk about, I know some of
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: both of y'all's writing experiences, but I'm wondering, like, particularly
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: in elementary school or high school, college, were you involved in, like,
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: yearbook or publishing something, like a school paper, anything like that?
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I was a little bit involved in the school magazine.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I think I did some pieces for the school magazine
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: when I was in college. Shockingly, though, I wasn't a
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: yearbook person. I was adjacent to a lot of the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: yearbook people in high school, but I wasn't a yearbook person.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I think there was a literary club at the school with...
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: There was a super cool professor that the year before
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I got to the school, he... was no longer there.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: He was just one of those noted teachers. This was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: in high school. He was one of those noted teachers
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: that everybody would talk about. And I didn't get to
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: experience his class because I think he left before I
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: got there. So actually, I don't think that I was.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I was just always doing writing things. I did writing
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: competitions and things like that. But I remember one writing
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: competition that I specifically did. I don't know if I've
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: told this story on here before, but if I did,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: it was a long time ago. But I remember one
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: that I did, and they invited me to come do it,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: and I did it, aced it, loved it. Had a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: great time, by the way. Competitive writing is fun, but
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that's probably because I'm a nerd. So you had a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: time period, and you were given a topic, and you
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: had to write an essay on it. longhand. And there, like,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I remember, I was like, oh, God. I was falling
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: in love with my writing as I was writing it. Like,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I love this that I'm writing. And I knew I
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: was going over the word limit. And I was like,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: screw it. Like, I knew in real time that I
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to win. Because I went over the word limit,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: but it was more important to me to say what
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: I needed to say in the way that I wanted
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to say it. And I had enough time to. I'm like, dang,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I got enough time. I'm like on a roll. It's
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: flowing out of me. So I did that. And at
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the end, the administrator, professor, teacher, the person who brought
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: me on to do it, he was like, you would
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: have won, but you like, why did you write so much?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what do you mean? Was it not good?
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Were you not entertained?
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: It was my vision. Right, exactly. The visionary must complete
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the vision. So, no, I did a lot of writing things,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: but I don't think I was ever really formally involved
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: in any, like, specific writing clubs or yearbook or anything
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: I do love that you were, like, pedal to the metal.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: I'd rather write what I want to write than win.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I think that's, yeah, excellent. It can be a problem, like,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: if you extrapolate that to other... Other circumstances. Pros and cons.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Pros and cons. Yeah. What about you, Samantha?
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: My own writing. I did not get involved in much
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: in high school like that. I was a drama person,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: and I worked a lot. And I did a little
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: bit of cheerleading, but I did write a lot. I
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: think we've talked about my bad poetry. Yeah, I still
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: have books of my very bad poetry. And I loved that.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: But I did get something entered in one of those, like,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: you can pay... to get your work published. It's in
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: this work of stuff, but you have to pay to
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: receive it type of thing. So I'm pretty sure I
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: got scammed, and I really felt like I did.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Do something, though.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I was like, definitely, my poem is one of the
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: best in the poem of 500 from other high school
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: students around the country.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: You still have it?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: No, I never bought the book.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't buy the book. What? Come on.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: It's too much money.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't have that. No. I would have loved to
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: read it. I actually have that money.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Did y'all have in elementary school the books that the
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: schools would make out for each little class where they
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: would pick out a few of the classes and then
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: publish it, I want to say that loosely, within the
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: school and have somebody's drawing the front, this is like
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the fifth grade, whatever.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I had stuff in that published. Does that count? I
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: like it, yeah. One was a leprechaun story.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It won me $ 10. Ten bucks?
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I wish I could read that.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: I think you can, but it's essentially my how-to trap
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: a leprechaun. It all had to do with a glass
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: jar and a crayon, gold crayon that colors a piece
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: of paper that you wrap over a penny.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: End of story.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Early adopter of the cryptid story. I'm here for it.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: You know? You know.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: So those are my experiences.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Annie, I don't know if I know.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Did you join any of these things? I didn't do yearbook.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I did in elementary school. We had like a newsletter.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: And I would sometimes write for that. And it felt
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: very like I'm an investigator. Because we also had that.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: I think we've talked about this before. But, you know,
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: the banks where you could. the elementary school bank where
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: you could put money in and you had the person
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: who was keeping track of the money and all that
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: was supposed to teach you responsibility. I'd be reporting on that.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: I too had.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: A lot of embarrassing poetry and in high school, I
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: think it was freshman year, I hope it was freshman year,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: because I published, we put out a little book that
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: you could that all the students got to take home.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: And my entry was a poem. It was a very
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: emo poem. And it had a lot of clip art
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: of gothic fairies and butterflies.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I really went all in.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: And to this day, I think I do still have it,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: but I'm too ashamed to even look upon it. very
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: specific time of my life where i was like emo.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: All my whole wardrobe was just black clothes and i
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: guess gothic fairies yes but did you ever do a
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: gothic fairy costume i did yeah yep Sure did. That's
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: a memory I hadn't expected to open up. That was
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: really specific, Eve. I was just curious. That was really.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Specific that you would pinpoint that.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: That wasn't in my head.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: Eve's is good at this, Eve. Curious investigative minds. Which
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: is one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Because of the person we're talking about today, who I'm
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: very excited to discuss. Who are we talking about today, Eve's?
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, that is a great segue because we were talking
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: about Delilah Beasley, who was the first Black American woman
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to be published regularly in a major metropolitan newspaper. So
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: she was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. In September of 1867,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and as we often go through in these episodes of
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Female First, discrepancies around birth years and all kinds of dates.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I've seen also 1871 and 1872, and I can tell
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: that those sources are determining her age considering those birth years.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So sometimes you'll see these discrepancies where it's like, she
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: was 12 years old when she did this. But that
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was according to her being born in 1871. But that
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: doesn't change the impressiveness of her accomplishments. No, the age doesn't.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Her parents were Daniel and Margaret Beasley. She was the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: oldest of five siblings. And she went to public schools
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, which were segregated at the time. And around 1883,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: she started to write short pieces for local newspapers, including
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the Cleveland Gazette and the Cincinnati Inquirer. She was writing
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: about church and social activities in the city. But unfortunately,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: her parents died pretty early. I didn't see an exact
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: date for this, but that it was just probably sometime
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: in the early 1880s. And the children ended up getting
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: split up, living in different houses. And Delilah... had to
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: find some work to make money to support herself. She
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: started working, doing domestic labor for a judge in Cincinnati.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: She worked doing massages. She worked at the Buffalo Sanitarium
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: in New York. And then she became the head massage
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: therapist at a bathhouse in Michigan. So it seemed like
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: she had this kind of, there was a chain of
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: jobs that she had that were in this healthcare-adjacent industry,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: therapeutic things that she was doing to be able to
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: make money for herself. And so she was in that
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: zone for a while. But she was writing, and the
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: work that she started off doing as a writer, she
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: stayed focused on that too. So the editor of the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Ohio State Tribune and Catholic Tribune, Daniel A. Rudd, noticed
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: her work and enlisted her to write for those newspapers.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And in 1886, she started writing pieces for the Sunday
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: edition of the Cincinnati Inquirer. Unfortunately, her byline wasn't on
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of the pieces that she wrote for those newspapers.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: But she started getting bylines in the Cleveland Gazette in 1887.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: And she also gained this huge interest in the history
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: of Black Americans today. which is going to continue to
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: drive the work that she does in writing and then
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: off of the page as well. So she ended up
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: moving to California in 1910. She started off working as
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: a nurse for a former client, but she started taking
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: history classes at the University of California at Berkeley. She
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: dug through records. She started her work of digging, basically,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: going through records, hospitals, newspapers, personal letters that people wrote
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to each other. And she was doing some field work,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: like she was on the ground interviewing Black people who
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: would have been considered pioneers across the state and collecting
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: oral histories, going to county libraries to find records, going
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to the California archives and finding records at the Bancroft
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Library at UC Berkeley. And so she was immersing herself
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: in the world of of Black people who were the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: first to do things. And I should have said that
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: up top because this is quite a meta episode. And
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: one reason I just, I felt like it would be
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: kind of fun to talk about Delilah Beasley today because
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: she was finding people who were trailblazers. She was talking
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: to people directly who had, who made history. And they
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: were pioneering in their their relative fields, and those fields
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: were across the board. So the arts, politics, everything from
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: top to tail. But she also, in addition to her
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: being invested in it in a more archival and journalistic
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: way and literary way, she was also interested in it
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: from an activism perspective, like from a social good perspective.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: After the film Birth of a Nation came out in 1915,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: she written protests out in the white newspaper, the Oakland Tribune.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Although it wasn't as much of a, like, don't go
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: watch this film. She would come at things from the
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: perspective of Black upliftment. Like, that was always her first thing.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: her priority was showing how amazing Black people are and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: what their accomplishments are. And so in 1915, she started
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: writing for the Oakland Sunshine, which was a Black newspaper.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: And she was kind of on this mission to improve
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: how everybody, the general population of perceived Black people. And
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: that was the track that a lot of Black people
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: did take at the time was to just show to
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: a general audience beyond just Black people, beyond just putting
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: things in Black publications, to a general audience who Black
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: people were and trying to show them in a positive light.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And there was an article that she wrote soon after
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: she had wrote that initial piece for the Oakland Tribune
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that was criticizing the birth of a nation. And she
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: said this, news of special interest to us as a
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: people ought to be discussed in our own papers among ourselves.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: But if a bit of news would have a tendency
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to better our position in the community, then it should
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: not only be published in our own race papers, but
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: in the papers of the other race as well. So
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: that's that mentality that I was talking about, that a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: lot of people at the time wouldn't have agreed with
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that approach. And then there were a lot of people
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: who would have because it could have been seen as
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: kind of pat and saccharine to just say, oh, look
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: at us. Look at Black people. We are actually good
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: because it's more of a you're on the defense in
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a way saying, I know all these people think we're horrible,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: but we have to prove them wrong. But this was
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: her approach. And she said, was 10 toes down on it.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: In 1918, she published two articles in the Journal of
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Negro History. One of them was about slavery in California,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: which you can go read online right now. You can
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: find it on the Internet Archive and read it. And
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that document was pretty pioneering in itself to talk about
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the history of slavery in California. And in 1919, this
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: is when her seminal work was put out. She got
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: money from the general manager of the Oakland Tribune, Frances B. Loomis,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: to have her history that she had been working on
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: for so many years about California, and she had that published.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: It was called The Negro Trailblazers of California. And at
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: this point, she had been working on it for almost
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a decade. It ended up being about 300 pages long,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and this is what she put her blood, sweat, and
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: tears in it, According to the foreword that was written
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: by Charlotte A. Bass, who was the managing editor of
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the California Eagle, she said that she literally sacrificed her
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: health and money to do the research for the book.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: But it was a book about Black people. American pioneering
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: figures in California. She covered people all the way from
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the 16th century to the 20th century, and it was
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: split into three parts, one of which was historical, one
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: that was biographical, and another one that was about Black
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: people in the present day. And it included diary entries, poetry, photos,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: newspaper pieces, interviews with Black folks, and it also had
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: illustrated portraits of the people. And it was a first,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: a first history of Black Americans in California. So there
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: were a lot of firsts in there. And reviews of
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the book, though, were mixed. There were people who acknowledged
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the importance of that work and how she really was
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: dedicated to her mission because she spent eight years not
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: even being a person. She wasn't even from California.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: But she.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: put in all those years and actually went out to
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: places that some other people might not have gone to
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: get those oral histories. So people like Charlotte Abass, the
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: person who did the fort, commended her commitment to the cause.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But then there was Carter G. Woodson, who acknowledged the
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: importance of the work, but was also critical of her
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: style and her grammar. He said in a review that
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: he he wrote, when one considers the numerous valuable facts
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: in the book, however, he must regret that the author
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: did not write the work under the direction of someone
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: well-grounded in English composition. As it is, it is so
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: much of a hodgepodge that one is inclined to weep
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: like the minister who felt that his congregation was consisted
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: of too many to be lost, but not enough to
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: be saved. You know, shout out to Carter G. Woodson.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: You know, he's very pioneering in his own right. But
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that was a bit wordy, I would say. His own
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: criticism was a little wordy. And I, in reading about
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: her story, there was mention of, like, Delilah being not
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the best in her... her style and her grammar and
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: how she actually wrote and that it had to be
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: cleaned up by the editors. And I think those parts
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: are just part of a person's story. Yeah. Different people have...
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I feel many ways about it, which is why I'm
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: tripping over this right now, because I almost kind of
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: didn't want to bring that to the episode. But it's
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: also like.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to bring it because that's what the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: editor is for. Like that's the process whenever anybody writes.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So to bring that up as part of her story
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: feels a little bit like it's denigrating of the work
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: that she was doing because like everybody is better because
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: of their editors. Every writer is made better because of
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the work that's done and their own subsequent drafts and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the drafts of people that are helping them out. Like
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that's the whole point of it. And also there's always
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: this expectation that's put on Black women and to be
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: perfect from jump. So it feels like it's coming from
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that vein too. But at the same time, I do
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: feel like it can be very, it can be inspiring
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to know that somebody wasn't perfect because I think there
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: are so many of us artists and writers and people
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: who are working in all different kinds of fields who
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: may feel a little bit put down by the fact
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: that they have flaws in certain ways. And so, I
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: do think it's worth bringing to the conversation in that way. But,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: you know, okay, she couldn't write, but guess what she
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: was doing? She was getting bylines, okay? And the same
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: thing happens today. Whether or not a person likes someone's
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: writing or not, like, their writing is still published. And obviously,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: this work was mission-driven and mission-critical for Delilah. It was
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: important to think she was talking about, and the... Sentiments
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: that she was putting forth in her pieces went into,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: she brought into the work that she was doing in
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: her life beyond her writing. So from 1923 all the
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: way to 1934, she wrote the column Activities Among Negroes
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: for the Oakland Tribune. And that is continuing in this
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: vein of the work that she was doing for her book.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: She was, and the work she was doing previously, just
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: kind of logging the social and local activities that Black
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: people were doing. She was doing this for the Oakland Tribune,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: which was at the time the largest daily newspaper in
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Northern California. The column that she did for them was
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: printed in the local news section, and it was about
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: church and social events, births and deaths in the Black community.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: And sometimes she even traveled to other places in the state,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: to report. And she got info from Black newspapers from
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: other states as well to be able to bring those
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: to her column. And she wrote that this was her
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: mission in that column. The writer will continue to work
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: for a better racial understanding by giving to the reading
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: public a knowledge of the efforts, ability, and progress of
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the Negro peoples throughout the world. So back to this
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: guiding principle of hers to continue to uplift Black people
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: rather than focusing so much on the criticism of white
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: people and how they could do better and what they
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: were doing. She was just like, I'm going to hone
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: in on Black people, what we're doing, and I'm going
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to bring that to my writing and show it in
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a positive light. And this is the column that made
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: her the first Black American woman with a regular column
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: in a major newspaper. And there were female firsts. There
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: were a lot of female firsts. She was also focused
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: on women too. So, you know, it wasn't just limited
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to women, but there were a lot of female firsts
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: that she wrote about in the column. Like the first
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Black American teacher in Oakland Public Schools, the first Black
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: American woman to get a master's degree in music, and
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the first Black woman to be admitted to the California bar,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So she was paid about $ 10
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: a week for a column. And She highlighted the positive
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: contributions that Black people as individuals and Black people in
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: institutions made to society. She was a religious woman. She
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: was a Catholic woman. So there was a lot of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Catholic focus in the work that she was doing. She
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: talked about Black Catholics in Milwaukee that were building a
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: school and Black Fisk University students who raised money to
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: fund a building for the school. But she herself, she
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: didn't make a lot of money from her work, unfortunately,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: as we see in a lot of these stories of
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: female firsts. She lived in a rented room. She could
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: have made more money from jobs in the healthcare field, ostensibly,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: but she spent most of her time writing for newspapers.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: And that might go back to what Charlotte Bass was
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: saying about her sacrificing her health and money to be
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: able to do the reporting work that she was doing.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And she did sacrifice her health. So she had some
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: health troubles, heart disease, high blood pressure, hearing issues, things
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: of the sort that affected her. That said, she was
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: very active in her social life as well. She was
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a part of all these women's clubs. She was a
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: part of the Alameda League of Women Voters, the League
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of nations of the California Federated Women's Clubs, the NAACP.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: She was the first Black member of the Oakland Council
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: of Church Women. And on that council, she also founded
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: a race relations committee. And in her writing, I think
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: of them as little pats on the back, little written
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: pats on the back that she would give white folks
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: for including Black women in these integrated activities. So she
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: would be like, look, they were so gracious as to
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: bring Black people into these activities. She would uplift integrated things.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: But I found it pretty endearing in her story that
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: there were Black women in Oakland who formed a club
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: named after her. And it seems like they had this
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: pretty extended initialism or acronym, whatever you want to call it.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it's called when you back, you
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: do it in the opposite direction. Yeah. But apparently they
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: made her name stand for something is what I'm saying.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And that was deeds everlasting and lending a hand. Let's
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: be ever alert, serving lovingly every year. So obviously acts
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: of service was clearly something that she was known for
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: doing and something other people wanted to take after her in,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: which if I do say so, is a good thing
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: to model and be a role model in that way
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to other people. Yeah. She organized her own integrated activities.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: She helped establish a branch of the National Urban League
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: in Oakland. And one of the things that she protested
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: was how white editors would use words that were denigrating
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: to Black people like n * * * a and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: pickaninny and darky. And she went on this effort to
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: have the editors stop using those words and also to
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: capitalize the word Negro.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: And.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Even in that case, she still positioned her argument so
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: as to kind of avoid conflict in appearing seemingly confrontational.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: It was like, Black people are for the better if
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: you don't use the word in this way rather than
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: coming at it in a more finger-pointing, confrontational kind of way,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: which wasn't her style. And in fact, in 1929, the crisis,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: which was NAACP's magazine deemed her one of the leading
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: integrationists in the country. She was involved in that organization
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: in other ways. She was a national historian for them
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and wrote a preface to their history in 1933. But
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the next year in August in California, she died. She's
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: buried in Oakland. And Lena M. Weisinger continued her column
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: until 1943 after she died. But her work lives on.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Like I say, you can read it online. And her
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: work is also in collections and archives. The Oakland History
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Center has some of her work. So you can still
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: read it. And fortunately, the work that she did also
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: had an impact, I'm sure, in many ways while she
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: was alive and still does today. Yeah, absolutely. She did
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: so much work.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: And this was fun to have like a meta episode
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: and hear about the first and then the female first.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: I wasn't expecting. You know, because here we are on
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: female first talking about her.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: So that's kind of cool. Yeah. If only we could
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: send her this episode.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: I know it's a great story of somebody who knew,
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: this is what I want, this is what I want
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: to do, this is who I want to uplift, and
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: I'm going to do it. And as you said, and
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: as we kind of mentioned at the top, there can
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: be pros and cons to stuff like that, because it
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: did impact her health. But she just, it feels like
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: she had such a drive and just like a compass.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: This was her North Star.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: And to inspire a whole group that's like named after her,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: that's so fantastic.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Is that a new goal of yours now, Annie,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: to have? Inspire a group like that?
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: It's a good group.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: What would the acronym be? Yeah, what would it be? Oh,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll have to think about it. That's
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a new project. I do love that her name is
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: so long. And they came up with something. Every bit.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: They made it work. Yeah.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: I would say you would be easy, but you've got
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: like two.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: The why is causing a problem. The why and then
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a B immediately. Like, yeah.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Well, I think this should be a project. We should all...
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: think about this yeah you've got some work to do
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: or if any of the people who are listening have
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: any ideas for acronyms uh be kind though don't yeah
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: don't make it weird or mean don't make it weird
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: that's a great slogan just in general to go about
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: life in life oh well.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: I'm really happy that uh her work still survives and
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: that um people can check it out so Listeners should
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: go do that if you would like to. And you
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: should also check out what Eves is up to. So
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: where can the good listeners find you, Eves?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, you can find me at evesjeffcoat.com. That's spelled, oh,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: for anybody who wants to create that group and acronym
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: for it. My name is spelled Y-V-E-S. J-E-F-F-C-O-A-T. So if
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: you go to evesjeffcoat.com, you can pretty much get to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: everything from there. But if you want to go directly
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: to Instagram, I'm at notapologizing on there. And then I'm
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: also on many other episodes of Stuff Mom Never Told You,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: talking about female firsts, women in history who were pioneering
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: in their various fields.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: Yes. So go check all of that out if you
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: haven't already, listeners. And thanks as always, Eves, for being
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: here If you would like to contact us, you can.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: You can email us at hello at stuffandnevertoldyou.com. You can
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: find us on Blue Sky at Mom's Stuff Podcast. We're
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: on Instagram and TikTok at stuffandnevertoldyou. We're also on YouTube.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: We have some merchandise at Content Bureau, and we have
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: a book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks,
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: as always, to our super producer, Rima, and our executive producer, Maya.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you. And thanks to you for listening.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: Stuff and Never Told You is a production by Heart Radio.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts from Heart Radio, you can check out
• 32:37
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• 32:39
  Speaker 3: to your favorite shows.