As Black History Month comes to an end and free press has become polluted with bias from all sides it’s essential to reflect on the Black female journalists who have shaped American media to be what it is today. Remembering the roots of inclusion and representation of the Black community is necessary to be educated on combating racism and stereotypes in our country.Â
Born enslaved in Mississippi, Ida B. Wells was one of the first Black women to write about the lynchings of Black people in Memphis after her close friend Thomas Moss was lynched by a white mob for imposing on a local white grocery store. Along with being a feminist and suffragette, Wells was among the most well-known Black female journalists for her contributions to the fight for equal representation of the African American community’s struggle in the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. Following in Wells’ footsteps, African American women have made significant contributions in multiple areas of the media.Â
Born in Louisiana and raised in Berkeley, Belva Davis graduated high school in 1951 and was accepted to San Francisco State University, yet did not attend due to admission costs. She was a single mother writing freelance assignments until she worked as an on-air interviewer at the rhythm and blues-centered radio station KSAN in San Francisco. In 1963, she made her television debut on the then-independent Oakland-based radio station KTVU. Following her excellent journalistic work at KTVU, San Francisco’s CBS affiliate KPIX hired Davis as a broadcast journalist. Now 92 years old, Davis’ journalistic work was during the height of the Civil Rights Movement as she covered groundbreaking stories surrounding Malcolm X, The Black Panthers, and the Berkeley Riots of the Free Speech Movement.Â
Lincoln University graduate and Memphis native Dorothy B. Gilliam became the society reporter at her previous school, Ursuline University, when she was only 17 years old. Gilliam pioneered coverage of the desegregation of schools by going against her editor’s wishes and covering the story of the Little Rock Nine; three years after the decision of Brown v Board of Education in 1954, the group of nine African American students shattered barriers as they attended a white high school–an event unheard of at the time.  Gilliam accelerated her career by earning her master’s degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After a short trip to Africa, The Washington Post hired Gilliam as their first Black female reporter. She stayed there for over thirty years.Â
Anointed “The First Lady of the Black Press,” Ethel L. Payne was born 2 decades before Davis and Gilliam in Chicago, Illinois. After attending night school for two years at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University–alongside a job as a public library assistant–Payne moved to Tokyo in 1948 to start her career in journalism. Payne returned to Chicago in 1951 and worked for The Chicago Defender, becoming the Washington correspondent for Sengstacke Newspapers in 1953. She was only one of three African Americans on the White House Press Corps at the time and was the first African American woman to focus on covering international news. Payne consistently delivered challenging, quick-witted questions for the White House during the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement. Her position in the White House Press Corps continues the legacy of Alice Allison Dunnigan, the first African American female White House correspondent and the first Black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries.Â
Other icons of Black female journalism history include Charlotta Bass who was the first Black woman nominated for Vice President in 1952 and likely the first African American woman to run and operate a newspaper. Vera Jackson made waves in the 1940s as a photographer for The California Eagle in Los Angeles, and was actually hired by Bass.Â
Each of these women bravely entered the world of journalism through strength, intelligence, and determination. Despite pushback from an almost entirely white field and severe underpayment due to racial and gender-based inequality, the first African American female journalists paved the way for today’s BIPOC women to pursue journalism.