Page:The Afro-American Press.djvu/388

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THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS.

Miss Smith is a writer of good English, and produces sensible reading matter. She tends to the grave, quiet and dignified style. Her best efforts have been for Our Women and Children Magazine, published in Louisville, Ky. The department of "Women and Women's Work" receives the benefit of her cultured hand regularly. She is deeply interested in the elevation of her sex, and is a strong advocate of suffrage for women. Upon this subject she wrote these strong words: "It is said by many that women do not want the ballot. We are not sure that the 15,000,000 women of voting age would say this; and if they did, majorities do not always establish the right of a thing. Our position is, that women should have the ballot, not as a matter of expediency, but as a matter of pure justice." It cannot be denied that the women have done great and lasting work, that needs our encouragement. Miss Smith is a member of the Afro-American Press Convention.

Our assertions as to her editorial ability are backed by some of the prominent writers of the country. The editor of The American Baptist says: "She frequently writes for the press, and wields a trenchant pen. Is ambitious to excel, and will yet make her mark." Mrs. N. F. Mossell says: "Miss Smith writes compactly, is acute, clean and crisp in her acquirements, and has good descriptive powers. Of strong convictions, she is not slow in proving their soundness by a logical course of reasoning. Her style is transparent, lucid, and in many respects few of her race can surpass her."

To show the reader Miss Smith's idea of the women in the field, we clip the following from her "Women as Journalists:" "The educated negro woman occupies vantage ground over the Caucasian woman of America, in that the former has had to contest with her brother every inch of the ground for recognition; the negro man, having had his sister by his side on plantations and in rice swamps, keeps her there, now that