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…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…Mary McCoy!
*~*~*

It never ceases to amaze me how the African American women of the 19^th century did not allow societal limitations to keep them from pursuing and obtaining their dreams. Josephine Silone Yates is another of them. Born in 1859 in New York on Long Island in Suffolk County, by the time Josephine Silone Yates died in 1912 she had been a professor, a writer, a public speaker, an activist, and the first African American woman to head a college science department. Many of the works written on her life focus not only on her work as a pioneering African American female chemist but also as an advocate for early care and education for young African American children.

She attended several schools in her youth and didn’t allow the fact that she was often the only African American student keep her from excelling. At a young age, Josephine showed an aptitude for physiology and physics. By the time she attended the Rogers High School in Newport, Rhode Island, her science teacher was so impressed that he allowed her to do chemistry labs. She graduated from Rogers in 1877 as her class’s valedictorian. Her teachers urged her to go on to university, but she chose the path of teaching instead. In 1879, she graduated from the Rhode Island State Normal School and became the first African American certified to teach in that state’s public schools.

She moved to Jefferson Missouri to teach at Lincoln University either in 1879 or 1881, depending on your sources. There she taught chemistry, botany, drawing, elocution, and English literature. She was promoted to the head of Lincoln’s natural Sciences department in 1886, making her the first African American woman to head a college science department. This also made her the first African American woman to be a full professor at any college or university in the United States. All the while she was teaching, she wrote newspaper and magazine articles under the penname R.K. Potter. By 1900, she was publishing poetry, too.

When she married William Ward Yates in 1889, she resigned from her university position, moved to Kansas City with her husband, and had two children. While he served as a principal there, she blossomed as an activist. Like many African American women of her time, she became active in the African American Women’s Club movement. She helped found the Women’s League of Kansas City in 1893. When the League joined the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), Josephine served in various offices from 1897 to 1901. She promoted the establishment of kindergartens and day nurseries through the NACW to help prepare African American children for a post-emancipation society where they would not be taught to be subservient second-class citizens.

Lincoln University asked Josephine to return in 1902 to head their English and history department. She did this until 1908 when she offered to resign because of ill health. Her resignation was refused, so she remained as an advisor to women until 1910. She continued championing education and advancement for African American women, helping to found the first African American Young Women’s Christian Association in Kansas City a year before she died.

Looking back on women like Josephine I am inspired by how their drive stems from wanting as many people as possible to benefit from their accomplishments. I hope someday the same can be said of me.

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

Better To Marry Than To Burn by Michal Scott

Wife Wanted: Marital relations as necessary. Love not required nor sought…

A bridal lottery seems the height of foolishness to ex-slave Caesar King, but his refusal to participate in the town council’s scheme places him in a bind. He has to get married to avoid paying a high residence fine or leave the Texas territory. After losing his wife in childbirth, Caesar isn’t ready for romance. A woman looking for a fresh start without any emotional strings is what he needs.

Queen Esther Payne, a freeborn black from Philadelphia, has been threatened by her family for her forward-thinking, independent ways. Her family insists she marry. Her escape comes in the form of an ad. If she must marry, it will be on her terms. But her first meeting with the sinfully hot farmer proves an exciting tussle of wills that stirs her physically, intellectually, and emotionally.

In the battle of sexual one-upmanship that ensues, both Caesar and Queen discover surrender can be as fulfilling as triumph.

Excerpt:

Queen Esther Payne arrived at noon on September fourteenth and proved to be a paragon indeed.

Caesar gawked at the copper-toned Amazon who emerged from the stagecoach like royalty descending from a throne.

Queen. Her name definitely suited. Only Cleopatra could have fit better. Maybe Sheba.

The afternoon sunlight crowned her with rays of gold. Kinky black ringlets covered her head, declaring she had a Nubian pride befitting the woman he’d want to wed. She used her bonnet to fan away dirt dusted up by the stagecoach’s departure. Her twisting and turning revealed an hourglass waist above curvaceous hips.

At his approach, her eyebrow curved over a gaze brimming with criticism. “Caesar King?”

He removed his hat and extended his hand in greeting. “At your service, Queen.”

She donned her hat and examined him with that regal air. “Miss Payne, if you please. You may call me Queen after the nuptials.” She finished tying her hat’s long ribbons beneath her chin. “Although, even then, I’d prefer Mrs. King.”

“You don’t say?” He chuckled, taking her measure from head to foot. “Well, Miss Payne it is…for now.”

She filled her face with a frown. “I don’t appreciate being examined like some newly purchased cow, Mr. King.”

He pulled back. Amusement wrestled with annoyance. “I’m making sure you measure up, Miss Payne.”

“Pray, to what criteria?” She shoved her valise against his chest. Caesar grunted, surprised but pleased by her strength.

She crossed her arms, causing her lovely bosom to swell. “I doubt there’s a standard for marriages of convenience.”

He inhaled against the pull of desire throbbing in his privates. “The same criteria as you, I suspect—my own self-worth and what I deserve.” He dropped the bag at her feet. “So, by that token, I don’t appreciate being treated like some fetch-and- carry boy.”

She lowered her gaze. But for the set of her jaw, he’d have taken the gesture for an apology.

He leaned forward and whispered, “If you ask me nicely, I’d gladly carry your bag.”

“A gentleman wouldn’t need to be asked.” Her tone dripped with disdain. “A gentleman would simply take it.”

“I do many things, Miss Payne.” He pushed up the brim of his hat and grinned, fired up by the hazel flame sparking in her eyes. “Pretending to be a gentleman doesn’t number among them.”

Buylink: https://amzn.to/2KTaGPH

UPDATE: The winner is…Diane Sallans!
*~*~*

The phrase “fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree” describes Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin perfectly.

Born Josephine St. Pierre in 1842 in Boston, her middle-class parents sent her to integrated schools in Charlestown, Salem, and New York rather than accept the segregation imposed by Boston’s school system. No wonder she lived a life predisposed to fighting injustice on her own as well as on the behalf of others.

She married George Lewis Ruffin in 1858. A pioneer in his own right, the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School and the one of the first African American judges in a Northern state. They lived in England for six months then returned and helped recruit volunteers for African American Civil War regiments like the Massachusetts 54^th.  He died in 1886.

A member of the New England Women’s Press Association, Ruffin wrote for the Courant, a weekly paper for African Americans. She founded the Women’s Era, the first newspaper published by and for African American women. She and her daughter, Florida, published this illustrated monthly for seven years.

Her fight for women’s suffrage showed she understood the concept of intersectionality. She is quoted as saying, “We are justified in believing that the success of this movement for equality of the sexes means progress toward equality of the races.” Ruffin served as president of the West End League of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.

She was the first African American member of the New England Women’s Club. In 1893, she founded The Woman’s Era club for African American women. Living up to its motto, “Make the World Better,” their activities promoted and fundraised for self-help activities to “uplift the race.” Ruffin believed a national organization for African American women’s clubs was needed and organized a conference in Boston to that end. Women from ten to fourteen states attended. They formed the National Federation of Afro-Am Women. This in turn merged with the Colored Women’s League, forming the National Association of Colored Women.

In 1900 at the meeting of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Southern women on the credentials committee opposed her representing both white and African American clubs.  They would only accept her credentials for the white clubs. She refused and was excluded from the meeting. The incident was nationally covered by the press.

Ruffin continued her fight for racial equality, and in 1910, became a founding member of the Boston NAACP. She died in 1924. In 1995, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. A bronze bust of Ruffin is one of six famous Massachusetts women which stand in the Massachusetts State House.

Once again, the accomplishments of women like Josephine awe and inspire me to do all I can with the opportunities I have. For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, leave a comment on Josephine and other women who have inspired you.

Better To Marry Than To Burn

Freed Man seeking woman to partner in marriage for at least two years in the black township of Douglass, Texas. Must be willing and able to help establish a legacy. Marital relations as necessary. Love neither required nor sought.

Excerpt:

She sidled up to him, cupped his erection and fondled his balls.

“Ready for bed or ready to bed me?”

He moaned, placed his hand atop hers and increased the pressure. Already hard, he hadn’t imagined he could get any harder.

“Is that beautiful brass bed new?”

He gulped. “Ye—yes. Bought it—bought it for the honeymoon.”

“I’m ready to be bedded now,” she whispered. “Or is that something we must negotiate?”

All thoughts of dinner vanished.

“No,” he rasped, leaning forward, as hungry for her lips as he was to be inside her.

“Good.” She stepped back, out of reach. “But, let’s be clear…” She bent over, so her butt protruded toward him.

She massaged each buttock so her crack parted invitingly.

“Tonight, it’s the Greek way or no way.”

He blinked, stunned by this demand to be taken anally. His master had had books filled with drawings, depicting naked Greeks wrestling. Those pen and ink depictions flashed before him now. Arms constrained by arms, legs entwined with legs, butts and groins enmeshed in snug contortions.

He’d love to take Queen that way, experience first- hand the erotic intimacy etched in the men’s struggle-laden features.

He took one step toward her then stopped. No. One day, he would…but not tonight. Not their first time. Their first time would be the nose-to-nose, chest-to-breast, cock-to-vagina coupling he’d hungered five years for.

buy link: https://amzn.to/2KTaGPH

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

“I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.”

Thus, Edmonia Lewis was quoted in the December 29, 1878, New York Times‘ article: “Seeking Equality Abroad. Why Miss Edmonia Lewis, the Colored Sculptor Returns To Rome – Her Early Life and Struggles.” While saddened by the familiar story of trials and tribulations faced by African Americans in this era, I am nevertheless heartened that Edmonia Lewis refused to let adversity keep her down.

Born on July 4, 1844 of African-American and Native American heritage, Edmonia was orphaned by the age of nine, but had two aunts and her half-brother Samuel to care for her. Samuel struck it rich in the California Gold Rush and was able to finance her education. She attended New York Central College from 1856-1858 then Oberlin College in 1859 where she was one of 30 students of color. A white mob, believing she had poisoned two students, beat her and left her for dead. Exonerated of those charges, she was later accused of stealing paint brushes and a picture frame. Even though cleared again, the college refused to let her re-enroll for her last term in 1863, thwarting her chances to obtain her degree. In 2022, Oberlin awarded her a degree.

She relocated to Boston in 1864, where she received the patronage of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison. Sculptor Edward Brackett became a mentor and helped her to set up her own studio. She sculpted and sold images of famous abolitionists on medallions made of clay and plaster. Her first real success came from the bust she created of Colonel Robert Shaw, the white officer of the all-black 54^th Massachusetts Infantry Civil War unit.

She traveled to Europe and settled in Rome by 1866. While there, she created one of her most famous works, The Death of Cleopatra. It was shipped back to the US and displayed at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. In 1877 while in Rome, Ulysses S. Grant commissioned his portrait from her. Edmonia remained in Rome where she could work without always having to combat the hostility of being Black and Catholic.

Life in Europe was no paradise, however. Sexism against female sculptors, regardless of race, was rampant. Nevertheless, Edmonia established herself and created pieces that included, but were not limited to, African-American and Native American themes. Her neoclassical style of sculpting fell out of favor in the 1880s, and Edmonia fell into obscurity. She moved to London in 1901 and died there on September 17, 1907. You can learn more about her and see her work on this website: https://edmonialewis.org/

Unfortunately attacks these days on opportunities to enable modern day Edmonia Lewises to emerge make her 1878 NYT quote still relevant. For a chance at a $10 Amazon Gift card, leave a comment on Edmonia’s life or on someone who you know persevered despite discrimination.

“The Spirit to Resist” by Michal Scott from Hot & Sticky: A Passionate Ink Charity Anthology

A woman may be made a fool of if she hasn’t the spirit to resist, but what does she do if, for the first time in her life, being made into a fool is exactly what she wants?

Excerpt from “The Spirit to Resist”

Florence lifted her face into the cool of the night and gazed at the stars. The breeze’s gentleness put her in mind once more of Harold’s sweet entreaty.

It’s just that I’d hoped to show you something different, something pretty special. Just for you.

The remembered words caused her nipples to pucker.

From here she could see the Edwards pavilion. It loomed surprisingly stately, given its frivolous purpose. She remembered her silliness with Harold over that tub of strawberry ice cream. A smile twisted her lips. What different, pretty special something had Harold planned just for her?

In her mind’s eye, she recalled control in that woman’s eyes back at Mrs. Wanzer’s. From memory, she reheard the sounds of pleading in the man’s grunting and groaning. The scene reaffirmed what she always believed. For sex to be satisfying, there had to be an exchange of power. Until she found a partner who believed this, too, she’d be a vanilla until her dying day.

She gazed toward the Edwards pavilion again. A similar exchange happened between her and Harold when she teased him. He enjoyed receiving her taunts as much as she enjoyed delivering them. They shared a mutual respect whenever they spoke, whenever they caught one another’s eye, even when no teasing occurred.

He’d had something planned for her tonight. Something different. Something pretty special. Something just for her. What might that something be? Something that said Harold, like Madison Dugger, respected the power of the cunt?

Maybe it wasn’t too late to find out.

Buylink: https://books2read.com/u/3nNDnx