The Colored Working Girl Beautiful.
No one should ever scorn a colored working woman. She has been the bone and sinew of the race. She has built the churches, helped the schools and has made the race what it is. The pioneer colored woman in most instances has helped to make the wealth that many colored families enjoy, today.
In my travels, on entering Southern towns early in the morning, colored women are the only women seen on the streets, and sometimes the only persons. They hurry along often with insufficient clothing in cold and rain.
One thinks of the little ones at home who dress themselves and perhaps, younger children, all without a mother's care, until night when the tired woman's return to her home to cook, to wash and to iron for her family after a hard day's work, in service.
In the antebellum days some of the Negro working women may have been lazy but their descendants of today are not lazy—only fifty years after. Statistics prove how many homes have been bought through their labor, how many children are sent to school. Working women pay the family doctor bills, and support the churches and charities.
"Every person should work or else she will need a doctor." Habits affect looks. If one is energetic and happy in doing her work, her face will reflect the contentment. If one hates work, the face will reflect discontent, the vital organs will grow flabby and affect the health, and looks will suffer. Enthusiasm in work stimulates the vital organs, causes circulation of the blood and makes the eye bright and the skin to take on a more healthy hue.
If a girl is obliged to work in a kitchen she should respect her work and dignify her position. She may be a "Somebody" washing dishes or scrubbing a floor, if she does not depreciate her work and if she will give it status instead of half doing it and complaining about it.
Only a somebody "can" work well. We cannot get blood out of a turnip, and neither can a nobody "do" things. A slip-shod, half-hearted working woman is a curse to the race, because she gives it a bad reputation. She should put the "somebody" stamp on every portion of daily work and do the work as if she expected to get a diploma for it each night. She should not work mechanically or it will be drudgery. She should put pride and enthusiasm in her work, and let it reflect her inner self.