The Work of the Afro-American Woman is a stirring tribute to Black women's rise in intellect, service, and public achievement. Framed as both celebration and record, it honors "budding womanhood" and traces how emancipation opened a "Woman's Century" in which Afro-American women advanced despite poverty, caste prejudice, and the lingering weight of slavery. Across its pages, the book surveys women's accomplishments in education, literature, journalism, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, law, mission work, and civic reform. It praises pioneering teachers and principals such as Fanny J. Coppin, Anna J. Cooper, Maria Baldwin, and Lucy Laney; writers and editors including Phyllis Wheatley, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Charlotte Forten, and Cordelia Ray; and professionals like Susan McKinney, Hallie Tanner Johnson, Lucy Hughes Brown, and Ida B. Platt. It also honors Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, inventors, artists, singers, businesswomen, and laborers whose courage and enterprise transformed their communities. Rich with poetry, memorial verse, and race pride, this collection presents Afro-American women as builders of institutions, guardians of freedom, and enduring voices in American life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

À propos de l'auteur

Mossell, N. F. Mrs.

N. F. Mossell, often identified as Mrs. N. F. Mossell, emerged as an influential African American writer, educator, and advocate at a time when Black women’s voices were too often excluded from public life. Born in the nineteenth century and shaped by the aftermath of slavery and Reconstruction, she devoted her career to advancing education, respectability, and self-determination for African American women and families. Her most important literary achievement lies in her pioneering social and historical writing, which documented the labor, leadership, and resilience of Black women with clarity and purpose, helping to correct the distortions of a society that routinely ignored their contributions. Through her work, she explored themes of racial uplift, women’s achievement, civic responsibility, and the power of education, themes that remain strikingly relevant in conversations about representation, equity, and the visibility of marginalized communities today. Mossell’s legacy endures because she wrote not only to record history but also to shape a more just future, offering readers a model of intellectual courage and public engagement. Today, she will especially appeal to readers interested in African American history, women’s studies, early Black journalism, and the long tradition of writers who used the page as a tool for social change.