Some Noted Colored Women.
The Philadelphia Press, of last Sunday, contains the following concerning a few notable colored women of the country: Colored women have hardly had opportunity to do much that is sensational, but still there are several who have earned a solid reputation. The most prominent colored women in Washington, in the best sense of the word, are teachers—such women as Miss M. B. Briggs, professor of English in Howard University, a most talented woman; or Josephine T. Turpin, of the same school, who is a frequent contributor to newspapers; or Lucy Moten, who is the efficient principal of a big training school; or Mary Nalle, or Marian Shadd—all highly cultured women, respected and esteemed by those who know them. In the ranks of prominent colored women of Philadelphia, there is the skilled woman physician, Dr. Caroline V. Anderson. She is the daughter of William Still, a wealthy colored merchant, and a regular graduate of the medical department of Howard University, and enjoys a big practice. Then there is Mrs. Fancy Jackson Coppin, the lecturer, who devotes most of her time to the Institute for Colored Youth, and Mrs. Gertrude Mossell, who used to conduct the women's department on the New York Freeman, and who has written for the Philadelphia Press as well as for papers published in the interest of the Negro race. Mrs. Mossell is, also, a member of the Woman's National Press Association. Mrs. Frances E. W. Harper, the temperance lecturer and writer, has also been a resident of Philadelphia. Among colored women who have become more or less renowned in the arts and professions, must be mentioned Mrs. Nellie Brown-Mitchell. She is a musician with a mechanical turn of mind. She has invented and patented two or three appliances now in common use by musical instructors. Equally well known in another branch of the fine arts is Edmonia Lewis, the sculptor. She is an Afro-Indian, and was born in New York state, but now has her studio in Rome, where she has plenty of commissions and has done some fine work. "The Old Arrow-Maker and his Daughter," is one of her best known productions and is owned in England. Ida B. Wells—"Iola" whose suit for damages under the Mississippi laws for being forcibly thrust out of a passenger car in Memphis by three or four white men, brought her before the public a few years ago—is probably the best known of colored women journalists, and Mrs. M. E. Lambert, of Detroit, is a poetess of genius. There are two colored women in the ranks of the law, Miss Florence Ray, of Brooklyn, and Mrs. M. S. Cary, of Washington. There is at least one colored minister, the Rev. Mrs. Freeman, of Providence, and there has been one woman at the head of a newspaper published in the interest of Afro-Americans, Miss Carrie Bragg, who for sometime edited the Lancet at Petersburg, Va. Nor would it be difficult to pick out a dozen colored women in the country whose property in the aggregate might be expressed "on information and belief," by seven figures. In such a list would come the Gloucesters, the rich boarding house keepers of Brooklyn; Miss Amanda Eubanks, of Rome, Ga., whose white father left her $400,000; Mrs. Mary A. Wilson, a wealthy Florida woman; Mrs. Mary Pleasants, of San Francisco, who made something more than $35,000 in government bonds, owns a ranch and has some real estate; Mrs. James Thomas, of St. Louis, who is worth something like $300,000, and whose barber shop, the "Lindell," is the most luxuriant in the country, and Mrs. Catherine Blake, who owns the Kenmore Hotel at Albany, which is reputed worth $150,000. Miss Blake, a wealthy young colored woman of Nash, N. C., has taken the prize for the best production of cotton at all the State fairs, and several other Afro-American women with ample incomes are doing solid industrial work.—Chr. Recorder.
There are many noble women throughout the South who have done great work for the race, and whose names should be added to the above number. If Dr. Simmons, who wrote that excellent book, "Men of Mark," will get up a similar work of our "Women of Mark," he will find fully as much meritorious material among our women as he found among the men.
