UPDATE The winner is…Kerry Jo!
*~*~*

Alice was born in 1875 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her mother was a former slave, and her father was White. She wrote, taught and/or lectured everywhere she lived: Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Delaware, and Pennsylvania. She received her education from Straight University in Louisiana and Cornell University in New York. After graduating from Straight in 1892, she began teaching in the New Orleans public schools.

Her teaching career included working at the White Rose Mission in Manhattan and co-founding a reform school for girls in Delaware. Her later activism led to her being removed from her teaching position at Wilmington Delaware’s Howard High school in 1920.

In 1895 her first anthology, Violets and Other Tales was published by The Boston Monthly Review. A poem she wrote in the Review brought her to Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s attention. Several resources cite their romance as being the African American equivalent of Robert Browning’s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s courtship. However, disagreements on how to handle race in their writing and her same gender loving relationships with women shows me their relationship wasn’t always idyllic. Dunbar became increasingly physically and emotionally abusive. She separated from him in 1902 and was still married to him when he died in 1906. During their marriage she published her next piece, The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories in 1899.

 Besides poetry she wrote articles on race relations, the limitations placed on working women, civil rights and suffrage in magazines, church related publications, academic journals and newspapers. These were topics on which she lectured as well. In 1914, she published Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence, which contained speeches made by men and women of African descent born in the US, Europe and Africa. From 1926 to 1930 she wrote a column for the Washington Eagle. She also kept a diary addressing the issues of her day. She wrote prolifically despite encountering lots of rejection because she addressed oppression and racism in her writing.

She married two more times. The second to a fellow teacher which ended in a friendly divorce. The last to Robert J. Nelson in 1916, a poet and activist to whom she remained married until her death and with whom she was active in politics, campaigning for anti-lynching laws. Like many African Americans of her day, she was a republican but not a chauvinistic one. When the republican senator from Delaware refused to vote for an anti-lunching bill, Alice campaigned and got twelve thousand new voters registered, leading to the senator’s losing reelection.

Alice died in Philadelphia in 1935 due to a heart condition at the age of 60. Having learned all this about her, I will think of her as a poet, critic, journalist, and activist who also happened to marry a famous poet. I hope that’s how you’ll think of her too.

A Portrait of Alice Dunbar

For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, share your impressions of Alice in the comments.

“Take Me To The Water” by Michal Scott

UPDATE: The winner is…Jennifer Beyer!
*~*~*

Come up with the correct question to this Jeopardy answer: In 1928, she was appointed chairwoman by Herbert Hoover to head a committee charged with fact finding on the issue of Negro housing. Correct question: Who is Nannie Helen Burroughs? Nannie Helen Burroughs lived when the Republican party was still the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and when being a Black republican wasn’t an oxymoron.

Nannie was born on May 2, 1879, in Orange, Virginia, to freeborn parents. Their enslaved father used his carpentry skills to buy his freedom. Nannie’s father was a minister and her mother a cook. They instilled in her the core value of uplifting the race in everything she did. It’s no surprise that she chose, “We specialize in the wholly impossible” for the motto of the school she would establish.

Active in her denomination, Nannie served as bookkeeper and secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention. In 1900, her speech, “How the Sisters Are Hindered From Helping,” led to the founding of the Women’s Convention in 1900. She served as president until 1913 and continued working with them until 1947.

While studying at Eckstein-Norton University in Louisville, Kentucky, she created a club for women which provided bookkeeping, sewing, cooking, and typing classes in the evening. Societal opposition to educating women beyond being homemakers only inflamed Nannie’s activism. In 1909 at age twenty-six, she opened the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington D.C. The school provided classes in shoe repair, barbering, and gardening in addition to domestic science and secretarial skills. In 1918, a Seattle magazine article showed the school also offered millinery classes and agricultural training. To graduate, everyone had to take the course Nannie created on the contributions of African Americans to history.

She worked for suffrage with my September 2024 D.D. blogpost subject Mary Church Terrell and advocated for the unionization of domestic workers. Nannie’s work with the National Association of Colored Women led to the founding of the National Association of Wage Earners.

She never married and worked tirelessly on her causes. But don’t picture her as a workaholic activist. In the 1920s, Nannie wrote two popular one-act plays for church groups, which continued to be produced through the decades. Her comedic satire The Slabtown District Convention enjoyed a revival in 2001.

A biography of Nannie was included in the children’s book Women Builders in 1931. The work was illustrated by my D.D. October 2023 and February 2024 post subject, Hallie Q. Brown.

Nannie died in 1961. Three years after her death, her school was renamed for her. Trades Hall, its original building, was designated a national historic landmark in 1991. A prolific writer and editor, the Library of Congress holds 110,000 of her papers in its Manuscript Division.

Once again, the dedication and determination of women like Nannie Helen Burroughs leaves me awestruck. For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, share your impression of Nannie and women like her in the comments.

Her Heavenly Phantom
by Michal Scott

Forced into a marriage of convenience neither wants, a mild-mannered banker with an intriguing secret discovers his reluctant bride has a secret, too.

Excerpt from “Her Heavenly Phantom” inside Secret Identities…

The carriage driver’s whoa brought him back to the present. Twelve noon and the sun shone brightly. Too brightly for noon on Good Friday. At that hour the sky had begun to darken and the veil of the temple had ripped in twain as Jesus died for our sins on a cross between two thieves.

Harold stepped to the sidewalk and offered his hand to Emily. She took it without a word then preceded him up the steps to their new home.

“I’ll be late at the bank, preparing for my trip to Philadelphia,” he said. “You weren’t expecting me for dinner, were you?”

“No.” She pulled off her gloves and laid them beside her hat on the hall table. “Will you want something upon your return?”

“Don’t bother. I won’t be hungry.”

“Very well. I’ll leave a note for cook with tomorrow’s menus.” She went up the stairs. Her bustleless walking skirt outlined a shapely rear. She swayed with each step as if in time to some erotic metronome. Harold blenched and concealed his cock’s sudden twitch behind his top hat.

“I’ll make sure to leave a door open,” she said. “So, you’ll know which bedroom is yours.”

That suited him fine. He’d want no witness to him losing himself in the rapture induced by his lady of the balcony.

Buylinks:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBJ47ND6/
B&N https://shorturl.at/B0NLA
KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/secret-identities-8

UPDATE: The winner is…Mary Preston!
*~*~*

Mary Eliza Church was born September 23, 1863, to a family of the Memphis, Tennessee, Black elite. Her father, Robert Reed Church, one of the first African American millionaires, made his fortune in real estate. Her mother, Louisa Ayres, was entrepreneurial too, running a beauty salon. Former slaves, Mary’s parents never let society tell them what they could do. Neither did their daughter. Mary chose the four-year gentlemen’s course at Oberlin College and became one of the first African American women to earn a Bachelor of Arts in 1884 and then a Master’s degree in 1888 as did Anna Julia Cooper (whom I blogged about here on April 27, 2022) with whom she remained lifelong comrades in the struggle for women’s rights and racial justice.

After graduating from Oberlin, Mary taught at Wilberforce University for two years before moving to Washington, D.C., to teach Latin. There, she married Robert Terrell in 1891. They had five children. Becoming married forced her to leave her teaching job, but she heeded the advice of Frederick Douglass to remain active in the fight for African American equality.

She was instrumental in founding several civic clubs and national associations dedicated to uplifting the race: the Colored Women’s League (CWL) in 1892, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, the College Alumnae Club (now the National Association of University Women) in 1910, and the Delta Sigma Theta sorority in 1913-1914.

As an educator, she championed education as the way up and out of the double-yoke oppression of being African American and a woman. Through the CWL in Washington D.C., she started a training program and a kindergarten before any were started in the public school system. She continued this work by founding daycares and kindergartens through the NACW. As a journalist, she wrote articles exposing the lies of lynching, just like Ida B Wells Barnett, with whom she worked. Both women had close friends who were lynched because their businesses were successful. As a suffragist, she challenged white women to recognize the vote was not the be-all and end-all for African American women. As a boots-on-the-ground activist, she fought segregation and racism through boycotts, sit-ins, picketing, and lawsuits. In 1950, aged 87, she sued a Washington D.C. restaurant for refusing her service due to her race. The Supreme Court ruled in her favor in 1953.

Whenever the doom and gloom of today’s naysayers stink up the air, I turn aside and inhale the rich odors of the history left behind by Mary Eliza Church Terrell. Until her dying day, July 24, 1954, at age 90, she lived the motto of the NACW, “Lifting as we climb.” Here’s a PBS’ Unladylike 2020 video about Mary: https://www.pbs.org/video/she-was-civil-rights-activist-and-co-founder-naacp-q3ypkj/

For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, share what you find inspiring about Mary or some woman you’ve learned about who inspires you to lift while you climb.

“Her Heavenly Phantom” by Michal Scott
Secret Identities: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology

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Forced into a marriage of convenience neither wants, a mild-mannered banker with an intriguing secret discovers his reluctant bride has a secret, too.

Excerpt from “Her Heavenly Phantom”…

“Thought your bride might accompany you tonight.”

Harold adjusted the folds of black silk attached to the brim of his hat. “Don’t be ridiculous. She knows nothing about my secret life on the stage.”

“How do you plan to keep her in the dark? Won’t she be concerned where you go at night?”

“My marriage of convenience is just that. She doesn’t want to know anything about me. I want to know as little about her.” He adjusted the fit of the face mask that covered all of his face above his nose. “What’s my itinerary?”

“You’ll have off until Easter then you head for a three-week engagement in Philadelphia then to upstate New York for another three weeks in Buffalo before returning for your farewell engagement here.” Michael shook his head. “Pity you had to marry. I will sorely miss our lucrative partnership.”

Harold scanned his dressing room table. “Speaking of missing.”

“You won’t find a letter tonight,” Michael said.

A pang throbbed in Harold’s chest. Where was the air in this damned room? “What do you mean?”

“Your lady of the balcony only just arrived at intermission. Maybe she’ll leave you one when you return.” Michael closed the calendar and stood. “I wonder why she lurks behind that Mardi Gras mask of hers.”

“The manager of The Phantom doesn’t understand that his client isn’t the only one who needs to hide his identity from the outside world?”

UPDATE: The winner is…Paula J McGhee!
*~*~*

UPDATE: The winner is…Amy Fendley!
*~*~*

Born in 1815, Harriet Ann Jacobs started life as a slave in Edenton, North Carolina but died an author, school founder, “contraband” advocate, and women’s rights champion in Washington D.C. Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, chronicles the brutality she endured as an enslaved woman, but also demonstrates her resiliency, thanks to her family connections.

Harriet belonged to a tavern owner’s daughter who disregarded societal rules and taught six-year-old Harriet to read and write. Unfortunately, when the woman died, Harriet’s ownership transferred to John/James Norcom’s family, where Norcom sexually abused her. She began a relationship with a white lawyer named Samuel Sawyer who fathered her son Joseph and her daughter Louisa Matilda. Despite this relationship, Norcom kept sexually harassing Harriet. She ran away in 1835 and hid in her grandmother’s crawl space until she could escape to Philadelphia in 1842.

From there, she moved to New York and worked as a nanny for writer Nathaniel Parker Willis’ family. To thwart Norcom’s attempts to recapture her, the Willises sent Harriet to Massachusetts multiple times where her brother John lived and was an abolitionist.

After traveling to England with Willis and his child, Harriet lived in Rochester NY with abolitionist activist Amy Post, thanks to her brother’s connections with Frederick Douglass. She visited the Willis family back in New York City and agreed to work for them again. Since she was still a fugitive, they purchased her freedom in 1852.

Her brother and Post encouraged her to write down her life story, but Harriet refused.  However, a defense of slavery written by the wife of President John Tyler, finally broke down Harriet’s resistance. She responded to Julia Tyler’s lies that slaves were happy and well-treated with “Letter From A Fugitive Slave.” She sent the testimonial to the New York Daily Tribune, which published it on June 21, 1853. You can read the text here: https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/support16.html.

This letter served as the springboard for Harriet writing her autobiography.

She tried three times to find a publisher for her work here in the US and in England. After the third attempt failed, she was able to buy the plates and had the book printed herself under the pen name Linda Brent in 1861.

During the Civil War in occupied Alexandria, Harriet did relief work with contrabands—slaves who had escaped and found shelter with Union troops. She traveled north and to England several times to promote and raise financial support for this work. In January 1864, Harriet opened the Jacobs School with her daughter to teach the formerly enslaved to read and write. After Sherman’s marches, they took the Jacobs School to Georgia as well. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and post-reconstruction violence by the Ku Klux Klan forced them to relocate North. They opened boarding houses, first in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then in Washington D.C.

She died on March 7, 1897, and is buried in Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery.

In 2004, Jean Fagan Yellin published a biography entitled Harriet Jacobs: A Life. Yellin also started the Harriet Jacobs Papers Project. which collected nearly one thousand documents written by, to and about Harriet, her brother John, and her daughter Louisa. Through her research which began in the 1980s, Yellin has used documents from various historical societies and archives to successfully defend Harriet’s work as an autobiography, not a work of fiction as some academics had claimed.

Today in the US people are still trying to whitewash the history of slavery, but slave narratives written by men and women like Harriet keep setting the record straight.

For a chance at a $10 Amazon Gift card share in the comments any thoughts this post may have raised for you.

One Breath Away
by Michal Scott

Sentenced to hang for a crime she didn’t commit, former slave Mary Hamilton was exonerated at literally the last gasp. She returns to Safe Haven, broken and resigned to live alone. She’s never been courted, cuddled or spooned, and now no man could want her, not when sexual satisfaction comes only with the thought of asphyxiation. But then the handsome stranger who saved her shows up, stealing her breath from across the room and promising so much more.

Excerpt:

Tonight, all she cared about was the pleasure she hoped to enjoy again.

Spectral fingers of steam wafted from the water, inviting her own fingers to play between her thighs. The hope of completed self-pleasure shivered agreeably along every nerve.

She closed her eyes and massaged her nether lips, tentatively then confidently. The slow coil of arousal spread from her gut to her core. Her body swooned as desire ebbed and flowed in each vaginal contraction. First her chest tightened, then her belly and finally her groin. She gasped, caught in the grip of longing.

Now. I’ll do it now.

She thumbed her clitoris. Already throbbing with eagerness, the nubbin responded immediately.

Her back arched. Her throat tensed as bliss hardened into a clawing climax. She reached for the release beckoning to her from the edges of consciousness…then fell suddenly, frighteningly onto a piercing stake of pain straight out of hell.

Buylink: https://amzn.to/2u5XQYY

UPDATE: The winner is…BN!
*~*~*

Do pioneers think to themselves, “I want to be first” or does becoming a first happen because they choose not to accept limitations? I believe the latter was the case for Mary Jane Patterson.

Mary Jane was born enslaved September 12, 1840, in North Carolina. After her father gained his freedom, he took the family to Oberlin, Ohio, in the mid-1850s. There, Mary Jane completed preparatory coursework at Oberlin College in 1857. She then enrolled in their four-year program of classical studies for men instead of the two-year course of study for women. She was not the first African American woman to graduate from a college, but this made her the first African American woman documented to have received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1862. She graduated with high honors in 1862 and gave a graduation address on the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. Think of it. She does this while the Civil War is raging.

After graduation, she moved to Philadelphia and taught at Fanny Jackson Coppin’s Institute for Colored Youth. In 1869, she moved to Washington D.C. and taught at the Preparatory High School for Negroes. In 1871, she became their first colored principal and, except for one year when she served as assistant principal, held the position until 1884 when she resigned but continued to teach. During her tenure, the school grew from less than 50 to 172 students.

Like many African American women of her era, Mary Jane gave time and money to community organizations which focused on uplifting the race. Her involvement in women’s rights led her to help found the Colored Women’s League of Washington, D.C.

In Hallie Q. Brown’s Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction published in 1926, Mary Jane is described as one who “blazed a trail that many have followed and will follow, ever choosing the highest and hardest courses and ever overcoming.” She died at the age of 54 on September 24, 1894.

So once again I wonder if pioneers consciously decide “I want to be the first” or do they have a natural determination that just makes it so? I’d love to hear what you think. For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card share your response in the comments.

One Breath Away by Michal Scott

Sentenced to hang for a crime she didn’t commit, former slave Mary Hamilton was exonerated at literally the last gasp. She returns to Safe Haven, broken and resigned to live alone. She’s never been courted, cuddled or spooned, and now no man could want her, not when sexual satisfaction comes only with the thought of asphyxiation. But then the handsome stranger who saved her shows up, stealing her breath from across the room and promising so much more.

Excerpt:

“Why, Miss Hamilton, I do believe you ‘re blushing.” His fingers held hers with a teasing yet possessive grip.

“I am not.” Her words shot out with a force she hadn’t intended. “I mean I don’t blush.”

“No?” A cheeky boyishness winked at her from eyes as dark as chocolate. He leaned down so his breath tickled her earlobe. “Not even if I kissed you behind your ear?”

She shrank back then stared up into the gaze showering her with attention. Her heart beat beneath her breast with a prisoner’s unease. An unease she knew well having once been a prisoner.

“You—you wouldn’t.”

His smile widened into a grin. “Only because I don’t want to embarrass you.”

The amusement in his voice coaxed forth a wet response that Mary clenched her vaginal muscles to stem. She swallowed repeatedly until she found her voice.

“You still haven’t answered me, sir. Of all the women here, why did you pick me?”

“Why not you?”

She blinked. Why not her? The answers swirled through her mind as easily as she and Eban swirled in this waltz.

Why not her?

Because she remained planted among the wallflowers by the time the musicians played the last song at every Safe Haven dance. Because she learned to hang back at the call of “Ladies’ Choice,” forewarned of rejection by the grimaces caused by her approach.

Because unlike desperate-for-a-man Felicity, Mary refused to dance on her back in some dark field just so she wouldn’t be a woman who ain’t been asked.

Ain’t been asked to court.

Ain’t been asked to spoon.

Ain’t been asked to the altar.

And never would be.

*~*~*

Buylink: https://amzn.to/2u5XQYY

UPDATE: The winner is…Colleen C!
*~*~*

Madame Marie Selika Williams was born Marie Smith in 1849 in Natchez, Mississippi. The Natchez area of Mississippi had the largest number of free blacks in the state, but the hardships they faced were no different than those of their enslaved brothers and sisters. Not long after she was born, Marie’s family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where a wealthy patron enabled her to study music. She is also reported to have studied the Italian style of singing with Antonio Farini in Chicago. In the 1860s, she moved to San Francisco, studied with a Signora G. Bianchi, then made her debut in 1876 as a concert soprano. She married fellow concert artist Sampson Williams. They remained married until his death in 1911.

Together with her husband, Marie toured and performed in the US, Europe, and the West Indies. Newspaper accounts proclaimed her a “colored vocalist of rare ability.” She is said to have added “Selika” to her stage name from the heroine of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s 1865 opera, L’Africaine.

Thanks to an introduction from Frederick Douglass, whom President Rutherford B. Hayes had appointed Marshall of the District of Columbia, Marie performed in the Green Room of the White House for Hayes, his wife and others on November 17, 1878. This made her the first African American to perform in the White House. After she performed, her husband also sang. A Washington Post article stated, “The several pieces showed to great advantage the remarkable power, sweetness, and versatility of madame’s voice and accomplishments, the “Staccato Polka” especially proving her worthy of her title as ‘Queen of Staccato.'”

That same year she performed at the New York Academy of Music and in 1879 at New York’s Steinway Hall. She toured Europe twice, first from 1882-1885 then again from 1887-1892. Her performances were warmly received there as well. Benjamin Brawl in his book The Negro Genius quotes this from the Figaro of Paris, “She has a strong voice of depth and compass and trills like a feathered songster. Her range is marvelous, and her execution and style of rendition show perfect cultivation.” During the first tour, she gave a command performance for Queen Victoria in 1883.

In 1893, she performed with her husband at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. In October 1896, she performed at Carnegie Hall with two well-known African American women singers, Flora Baston and Sissieretta Jones.

Besides touring, Marie taught at a music studio which she opened in Cleveland, Ohio. She retired from the stage when her husband died. At age 67 she accepted a teaching position at New York’s Martin-Smith School of Music. She died in New York, aged 87 in 1937.

Once again, I stand in awe of women like Marie Selika Williams. For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, share your thoughts in the comments.

One Breath Away
by Michal Scott

Sentenced to hang for a crime she didn’t commit, former slave Mary Hamilton was exonerated at literally the last gasp. She returns to Safe Haven, broken and resigned to live alone. She’s never been courted, cuddled or spooned, and now no man could want her, not when sexual satisfaction comes only with the thought of asphyxiation. But then the handsome stranger who saved her shows up, stealing her breath from across the room and promising so much more.

From One Breath Away…

He really wanted to dance with her. She blinked, speechless. A warning voice protested.

Resist.

Her heart countered.

Surrender.

She firmed her lips, heaved a sigh then accepted his invitation. Felicity’s sputtered shock and Widow Hawthorne’s happy cackle accompanied them to the middle of the dance floor.

He placed his fingertips respectfully but firmly above the rise of her buttocks and held her in place against him. A tickle invaded the wool of her skirt where the tip of his middle finger rested at the head of her crack. Pleasure tripped up her spine and trickled between her thighs. But, from the recesses of remembered experience, a voice of caution persisted.

He wants something, Mary. Beware.

“Why—why do you want to dance with me?”

He smiled with the serpent slyness that probably charmed Eve. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

“I might.”

He turned his head slightly. “Really? Your practiced calm says otherwise.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Practiced calm?”

“The face you present to the world until something touches your heart.” He gestured to his right. “Like when that baby there cried. Your expression changed to one of concern, then changed to one of contentment when his mother satisfied his hunger.”

Mary blew a breath through her mouth. This man was studying her. Really studying her. Should she be flattered or worried?

Buylink: https://amzn.to/2u5XQYY