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Gertrude Bustill Mossell, also known as Mrs. N. F. Mossell, was a prolific and ground-breaking nineteenth-century journalist and a member of Philadelphia’s Black elite, a group composed of middle- to upper-class Black folks. Scholar Rodger Streitmatter suggests that Mossell’s newspaper articles “illuminate a journalist who served her newly emancipated readers not only as a chronicler of issues and events of the day but also as a family advice columnist, a voice of morality, a civil rights activist, and a supporter of the expansion of women’s rights” (318). Mossell’s activist work was influenced by similar experiences of racist and sexist barriers that Fannie Barrier Williams challenged in her work. Resembling the activist work of Barrier Williams, who had the opportunity to exhibit her portraiture with the Colored Department at the Fair, Mossell also deserves to be represented as part of the Woman’s Department literary exhibition and we proudly include her on our Wish List for Black Women Writers who might have exhibited at the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair.

In 1855, Mossell was born into a prominent African-American family in Philadelphia whose ancestors gained freedom as early as the 1700s (Streitmatter 318). For generations her family had been extremely politically active, often challenging both racial and sexual oppression. For example, Mossell’s uncle Joseph Bustill not only worked alongside her father Charles Bustill in the Underground Railroad, but he was also “a leader in […] the National Equal Rights League, an organization […] formed in 1864 to oppose segregation and fight for the political rights of blacks, including full suffrage for both men and women” (Wright 96). Although Mossell and her sister lost their mother at a young age, their father encouraged them to develop their literacy by reading the Bible and works of literature. When she got older, she earned her education in public schools and the Institute for Colored Youth (Streitmatter 318). The Institute was central to Black community life when Mossell attended, with its particular aim being the training more Black woman educators (Wright 96). These early childhood experiences may have contributed to her later activist work, through which she called for better education and literacy for Black children. Mossell was only sixteen years old when a speech she gave at the Institute launched her successful journalism career; she soon began publishing essays and poems in newspapers, which developed into her later authorial and activist pursuits. (Streitmatter 318-319). In the 1870s, she balanced teaching in Philadelphia and New Jersey with writing for newspapers like the Philadelphia Echo and the Philadelphia Independent (319). In 1855, she furthered her career by writing for the New York Freeman/New York Age, serving as the women’s editor for the Indianapolis World, and writing for a plethora of magazines like the Woman’s Era andColored American Magazine (319).

Rather than give up her career after becoming a wife and mother, Mossell incorporated these experiences into her writing, often in the aforementioned family advice columns she wrote. Remarkably, she was quite successful financially for a woman of any race, being “the highest- paid black newspaperwoman at the time” (Wright 98). Her family’s staunch activism coupled with her ability to contribute to supporting her family financially likely influenced her writings, in which she frequently advocated for other Black women to pursue careers to support their families as well as their communities. These pieces use a rhetoric of racial uplift in which Mossell encouraged middle-class, well-educated women to further the success of Black Americans as a whole. She carries this theme, which I dissect later, across many of her journalistic and literary works.

Mossell’s column, “Our Woman’s Department,” stands out as a significant accomplishment in her career. The column, “the first woman’s column in the history of the African American press,” appeared in several newspapers, most notably The New York Freeman, and aimed to give practical advice to women and mothers, particularly Black women (Streitmatter 320). Although her column has not been critically examined by many scholars, Nazera Sadiq Wright argues that its promotion of “models of public citizenship that widened the boundaries of black female purposefulness in the postbellum period,” positions it as an important site of study (94). Through this column, we begin to glimpse the keen awareness Mossell had of the particular struggles faced by Black women. For example, she experienced the high mortality rates of Black children firsthand; in turn, childcare and health became common themes of her writing (Streitmatter 321). Additionally, Streitmatter asserts that “pragmatism and frugality were consistent themes in Mossell’s household tips as she attempted to teach newly emancipated Black women how to lead a comfortable life, while economizing at the same time” (321). Mossell’s discussion of how women can support themselves financially was radical for her time, when marriage was espoused as the normative path to women’s financial stability. Furthering her radical politics, Mossell used her voice and column to push for reform, championing women’s rights and suffrage (324). Wright argues that the inclusion and placement of the column in The New York Freeman “suggests that domestic activities, the politics of the nation, and current events of the world would not have been viewed as mutually exclusive” (Wright 99). This notion refuses the minimization of domestic issues while tying them to the political realm, a sentiment reflecting the Woman’s Department’s purpose of demonstrating women’s skills in the domestic sphere as well as the public sphere in their exhibit. In doing so, these women and Mossell created representation of women’s ability to participate in the United States economy. In turn, women were encouraged to consume more and become more involved in politics, which would assist in creating job opportunities, even as men were able to read domestic advice as well. Although she held special praise for Black mothers, she also pushed women to expand into politics and new careers, particularly in journalism (Streitmatter 324).

Mossell’s first book was published in 1894 and is titled The Work of the Afro-American Woman. The book covers Black women’s leadership and careers, specifically highlighting Black women writers; however, she also “establish[es] black women’s presence in and contributions to all areas of US society”(Moody-Turner 250). In a different vein, her second book was a children’s short story titled Little Dansie’s One Day at Sabbath School, published in 1902. This tragic story tells of a young African-American girl in Georgia dying after trying to rescue her teacher from an oncoming train during her first day of school. Reading these stories and Mossell’s other writing provides telling insights about the intersections of class, race, and gender in the late nineteenth century. Beyond her historical significance and contributions to fighting Black women’s oppression, I have included Mossell in this Wish List because of her engagement with subjects of racial exclusion – including especially her direct discussion of the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair in The Work of the Afro-American Woman. Her critical consideration of world’s fairs and anger over Black people’s exclusion from projects highlighting American accomplishments make her an exemplary figure for our recovery project.

Exclusion, Travel, & the World’s Fair

There is no indication that Mossell, a Northerner throughout her life, was present at the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair. Still, the journalistic success she saw during this period and her authorial pursuits mark her as a prominent Black woman writer of the early nineteenth century. Of course, because of the prejudice of its creators, she would have been excluded from the Fair’s Woman’s Department, regardless. Her discussion of similar exclusions at the Chicago World’s Fair less than ten years later allow for careful examination of how Black women writers may have reacted to or resisted such an exclusion. In a piece for the Christian Recorder addressed to “Editors” and “Moulders of Public Opinion,” Mossell demands: “Put the Colored Editors In.” She recalls coming across the list and first checking if any women appeared on it; indeed, two women editors were present (“Put the Colored Editors In”). Her emphasis that she, “being a woman,” looked for someone representing her gender first rather than her race speaks to her desire for all women to succeed in battling their mutual oppression (“Put the Colored Editors In”). This points to why Black women may have wanted to be a part of the Woman’s Department rather than the Colored Department; not only would it expand understandings of the category of “woman” at that time, but it would also showcase Black and white women’s common experiences under the US heteropatriarchy. However, the women included as “molders of public opinion” were white, and no Black editors of any gender were present on the list. Mossell criticized this stark lack of representation, as she knew there were “several [Black editors] who deserve this honor,” particularly T. Thomas Fortune of The New York Freeman and the editors of The Christian Recorder. This exclusion is especially bothersome when it comes to the “Southern Question,” which included only white opinions. The privileging of white voices on key political and historical questions likely contributed to Mossell’s desire to create “a national Negro historical society” (Kachun 305). Black Americans could not rely on white people to preserve and safeguard their historical artifacts because doing so could risk attempts to redefine the antebellum past and oppressive present (305). The aforementioned exclusions, though targeted at African Americans of all genders, resemble that of the New Orleans Fair’s Woman’s Department. Mossell’s persistent advocacy for Black historical accounts indicates the need to centralize Black voices in a society that has attempted to erase them from the historical record altogether.

We know that Mossell was aware of the New Orleans World’s Fair and highly concerned with
the Chicago World’s Fair from her chapter “Our Afro-American Representatives at The World’s
Fair,” in The Work of the Afro-American Woman. She speaks to the unfulfilled desire of African
Americans to be represented in the Chicago Fair’s National Committee; instead, they gained only
state representation (The Work 104). She runs through the appointees, the creation of a Woman’s
Committee for her home state of Pennsylvania, and her excitement for the achievements of her
Black peers. She also speaks directly of Fannie Barrier Williams and her work at the New Orleans Fair: “At the New Orleans Exposition some years ago her pieces on exhibition were the theme of many favorable criticisms by visiting artists. In conversation Mrs. Williams is delightfully vivacious
and pungent and displays an easy familiarity with the best things in our language” (The Work
111). As I have noted, this connection between Williams and Mossell displays the interconnected
nature of the nineteenth-century Black literary scene, which can be traced in multiple ways to the
New Orleans World’s Fair.

The socio-political landscape of Louisiana during the World’s Fair is critical when considering Black women’s real or hypothetical presence. Although it is important not to glorify the North or place it in a binary against the South – thus erasing the oppression still present in places like Philadelphia – we should acknowledge the extreme violence and threat to Black lives in the Southern states during this time. The racism in the South is represented by the “mass exodus from Louisiana in 1879, [when] thousands of newly freed men and women left the South” (Streitmatter 317). This was only five years before the New Orleans World’s Fair; thus, beyond the exclusions faced by Black women, there was also rampant segregation, violence, and discrimination undoubtedly present at the fair, even though organizers suggested it would be an integrated, peaceful affair. For example, many Black attendees of the fair faced segregation and ridicule on the railroads used to travel to New Orleans, a common occurrence for Black Americans in this era. Even in the North, Mossell was aware of the difficulties of being a Black woman in the public sphere. In her column, she denied narratives that Black women were occupying “too much space,” instead speaking on experiences of invisibility when in public alongside white women unconcerned with her comfort or well-being (Wright 113). These realities reflect the danger faced by Black women like Mossell when traveling. In her column, Mossell spoke about her confrontations with segregation and racial prejudice from law enforcement when traveling to New Jersey and Delaware (Streitmatter 323). In these unjust situations, Mossell describes resisting racist policies and practicing “civil disobedience,” encouraging her readers to do the same (Streitmatter 323). Mossell, and undoubtedly other women like her whose stories we have lost, resisted oppression and also pushed for reform in her daily life. Although there is no tangible evidence of Black women writers’ resistance to their exclusion from the Woman’s Department, Mossell’s discussions of exclusions at fairs, Black women creators who are worthy of equal treatment to white Americans, and daily acts of resistance to segregation can be read as synecdochal examples of Black women writers’ resistance to the exclusion of Black women from the Woman’s Department at the New Orleans World’s Fair.

True Womanhood & Racial Uplift

The designation of the “Woman’s Department” provides an entry point for examining what the category of woman entailed in the nineteenth century. This was the period when the “cult of true womanhood” defined much of what it meant to be a woman in America–that is, a white woman. True womanhood “emphasized innocence, modesty, piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Perkins 18). Like the Woman’s Department, this category excluded Black women. As enslaved people were dehumanized, Black women were not seen as human, much less as women. This devaluation of Black womanhood carried into the postbellum period, where Black women were seen as falling short of a constructed ideal of white femininity. Linda Perkins argues that while white women’s education focused on the ideal of true womanhood, African Americans viewed education from a racial uplift angle. She suggests that “this education was for the entire race and its purpose was to assist in the economical, educational and social improvement of their enslaved and later emancipated race” (Perkins 18). However, Mossell combines the rhetoric of true womanhood and racial uplift in her writing, rather than using only one or the other.

She viewed the Black Press, like education, as critical for Black uplift and consistently tried to improve conditions for Black journalists (Streitmatter 317). By showcasing their talents and calling for reform, Black writing could make a difference in the rights of African Americans and the treatment they received. The Black Press and journalists could also improve the “portrayal of African Americans,” in media overall (323).

With these aims in mind, we can better analyze the specific rhetoric Mossell used to speak to other Black women. She opened her column with these words: “The aim of this column will be to promote true womanhood, especially that of the African race. All success, progress or need of our women will be given prompt mention” (321). By invoking “true womanhood” Mossell resists the notion that Black women belong outside of this category, but also reaffirms the idealization of a certain type of femininity. She encouraged her readers to adopt this model of true womanhood by preaching modesty and manners for girls and praising mothers above all (322). Even though Mossell and her contemporaries believed their construction of an African- American true womanhood would benefit the entirety of “the race,” this ideal womanhood often framed working-class Black women’s performances of femininity as inferior. Among the women whom Mossell sees as embodying the ideals of true womanhood are those who demanded representation at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition. She describes Florence A. Lewis as representing “the symmetrical development and complete womanhood that it is possible for the Afro-American woman to attain under favoring circumstances” (The Work 107). She acknowledges the difficulty of striving for true womanhood under the constraints of racial and gendered oppression, but also evokes questions of class. Tenets of true womanhood, like education and respectable appearances, were more obtainable for the elite class of Northern Black women than working-class Black women. Mossell speaks about Fannie Barrier Williams similarly: “The life of this noble woman is being given to the uplifting of the girlhood of the race that needs, perhaps, more than any other in all this fair land, the guidance and fostering care of such a noble, Christian motherhood” (The Work 114). In her praise of Williams, she uses the concept of true womanhood and motherhood as a means of racial uplift. She also suggests, as elsewhere, that it is the responsibility of elite Black women to elevate the lower classes of African Americans. Mossell’s words display how in touch she was with the rhetoric surrounding womanhood at the time, while also demonstrating her classed biases. Nevertheless, although she essentializes womanhood and motherhood, she resists the historical exclusion of Black women from these categories.

Mossell also used her column to center young Black girls as important members of U.S. society and the Black community. Speaking not only to adults but to girls, Mossell offered advice to prepare them to become productive members of society and learn self-protection techniques against employment inequities, violence, and oppression (Wright 95). The barriers to Black girls’ potential careers were myriad, but giving advice that could help overcome them was no easy feat. On one hand, Mossell depicted Black girls as vital for “the black home as a well-organized, industrious and egalitarian space in which black fathers, mothers, and children all had something to offer the community” (102). This framing of the home suggests more equal involvement across a variety of fields rather than alignment with strict gender roles. In effect, Mossell encouraged girls to work outside of the home. At the same time, however, she also acknowledged the difficulty of obtaining satisfactory and well-paying jobs, as another area of exclusion was employment. As Wright argues in her analysis of Mossell’s columns, “[w]hile industrialization was beginning to open new doors for white women, black female workers were being crowded into the lowest-paying and lowest-status work” (104). Mossell did not, however, look down on domestic work. In fact, she frequently advised domestic workers about workplace protections and believed in their importance to the community’s advancement (105). Mossell did not practice the same exclusionary measures as the Woman’s Department in her writing and ensured that women across many fields and domestic positions were included in her essay collection, The Work of the Afro-American Woman.

Recovering Mossell & Black Women Writers

Although Gertrude Bustill Mossell was an important figure in Black journalism, literary circles, reform movements, and elite society, her name is rarely mentioned in historical accounts.
Instead, she and many other Black women writers have been marginalized in contemporary discourse. As scholars work to change this situation, recovering Mossell’s career by editing her primary works and publishing scholarship about them, we can only imagine the number of Black women for whom such materials are not available. Still, by using Mossell as a synecdochal figure and looking closely at her writings on Black women, we can begin to responsibly recover the work of more of these women. For example, Streittmatter points to other Black women journalists like Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin of the Woman’s Era and Delilah L. Beasley of the Oakland Tribune whose experiences, along with Mossell’s, can help us imagine the work and lives of other Black women journalists in the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries. Additionally, Mossell’s The Work of the Afro-American Woman should be considered a key archival resource for recovery work. In her chapter, “Afro-American Literature,” she details the nineteenth-century Black literary scene and provides an extensive list of Black writers working at that time. More Black women writers like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, and Victoria Earle Matthews can be better understood through the lens of Mossell’s writing. Additionally, her book provides information on Black women beyond the scope of the literary world. By including “names of journalists and editors, black women medical professionals, lawyers and artists, public servants, and even the unnamed multitudes of black women laborers whose work counts,” Mossel contributed to documentation and recovery, making “a record for posterity, a call not to forget their names, an injunction to learn about them, to read their works, to learn about their contributions” (Moody-Turner 250). We present Mossell and the other women on the Wish List as only a start to the recovery work that must be done and encourage others to take up the attentive research of these primary sources and Black women writers.

Works Cited

Kachun, Mitch. “Before the Eyes of All Nations: African-American Identity and Historical Memory at the Centennial Exposition of 1876.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, vol. 65, no. 3, 1998, pp. 300–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27774119.

Moody-Turner, Shirley. “Recovery: Nineteenth Century and Now.” Legacy, vol. 36, no. 2, 2019, pp. 249–52. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5250/legacy.36.2.0249.

Mossell, Gertrude Bustill. Little Dansie’s One Day at Sabbath School. Philander V. Baugh, Philadelphia, 1902.

Mossell, Gertrude B. E. H. “Put the Colored Editors In.” The Christian Recorder, Vol. 27, no. 47, 1889.

Mossell, Gertrude Bustill. The Work of the Afro-American Woman. G. S. Ferguson, 1908, Philadelphia.

Perkins, Linda M. “The Impact of the ‘Cult of True Womanhood’ on the Education of Black Women.” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 39, no. 3, 1983, pp. 17–28.

Streitmatter, Rodger. “Gertrude Bustill Mossell: Guiding Voice for Newly Freed Blacks.” The Howard Journal of Communications, vol. 4, no. 4, 1993, pp. 317–28, https://doi.org/10.1080/10646179309359786.

Wright, Nazera Sadiq. “‘Teach Your Daughters’: Black Girlhood and Mrs. N. F. Mossell’s Advice Column in the New York Freeman.” Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century, U of Illinois P, 2016, pp. 93–117. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1hfr07t.7. Accessed 3 May 2023.