Wish List of Black Women Writers

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This Wish List of Black Women Writers responds to the exclusion of Black women from the
Woman’s Department of the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair. It is a work in progress, intended
as a place where visitors to the exhibit can continue to add the names of Black women writers
whom we wish had been part of the New Orleans Woman’s Department. whose works should
have been part of the 1884 library of women’s literature. Although these women were originally
omitted from “this beautiful sisterhood of books,” their presence on this Wish List rightfully
places their writing among the representative works of the era, and invites further exploration
and ongoing recovery.

The following names provide a beginning for our Wish List. These women published influential
literary works across a variety of disciplines, genres, and subjects, before or shortly after the fair.
We included writers of children’s literature, journalism, memoir, autobiography, fiction, and
religious writings. We did this to reflect the variety of genres present in the fair’s Women’s
Department and Colored Department so that our readers could imagine how these Black women
writers would have exhibited with them.

Please note that we have chosen not to limit our Wish List to writers already published before 1884. This is because we want to include writers whose careers might have benefitted from the
inspiration of seeing other Black Women writers recognized at the New Orleans World’s Fair.

As examined in “Recovery is Not Innocent,” this work is hindered by what has been excluded from the historical record and archival collections. But, while we may never completely document the Black women writers of the era, we hope that continuing to expand this list will help point toward all the other, lost or not-yet-recovered works by Black women authors.

We need your contributions! Add authors and works for inclusion, or propose your own research
projects about the authors and works already listed. Please see our submission page for more
details.

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Wish List Authors

● Virginia W. Broughton
● Hallie Quinn Brown
● Anna Julia Haywood Cooper
● Hannah Crafts
● Alice Dunbar-Nelson
● Sarah Jane Woodson Earl
● Julia Foote
● Frances E.W. Harper
● Pauline Hopkins
● Harriet Jacobs

● Elizabeth Keckley
● Jarena Lee
● Gertrude Bustill Mossell
● Frances A. Rollin
● Susie King Taylor
● Mary Church Terrell
● Ida B. Wells-Barnett
● Phillis Wheatley
● Fannie Barrier Williams
● Harriet E. Wilson