Page:The Afro-American Press.djvu/239

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AFRO-AMERICAN EDITORS.
231

His career as a good citizen, educator, and particularly as a journalist, has been marvelous. He early enjoyed the benefits of an excellent public school training, which his parents were enabled to afford him by moving to Ohio. Remaining there in the schools, he grew up well-educated and well-fitted for practical life, and as an upright citizen.

He moved to Kansas City when quite young, possibly 22, succeeding Hon. J. Milton Turner as principal of the largest school in that city. He held this position for ten years, until 1881 finds him a mail-route agent, which place he filled until President Cleveland's policy "to turn the rascals out" reached him, and out he went. In 1887 he was sealer of weights and measures for Kansas City. These positions he filled with credit.

Mr. Bowser is now a journalist. He has been successful in all of his journalistic work, and can be relied upon as being the hardest newspaper worker in Missouri, among the Afro-Americans. He has been constantly engaged thus for nine years, contributing largely to the success which now attends Afro-American journalism.

In 1880 H. H. Johnson founded The Free Press in Kansas City. Before the second number was issued, Mr. Johnson came to Mr. Bowser, whom he knew to be a wide-awake, vigilant writer and business man, and stated that he was in lack of means to continue the publication of The Press. Mr. Bowser, disliking to see the effort fail, immediately took hold, and in a few weeks he had organized a substantial stock company, which took control of the paper, changing it to its present name, The Gate City Press. This paper, under Mr. Bowser's editorial management, has become a household word in the West, and its columns are quoted from by the leading journals of the land.

Mr. Bowser is an editor whose writings command the most careful consideration. He is a fierce antagonist of quacks,