Delilah L. Beasley 1919 publicity photo for her book, "Negro Trailblazers of California"
While this blog is primarily aimed at reporting the tragedies of systematic White Supremacy and Male Supremacy and how prevalent these viewpoints have been as a political ideology in America’s history and still effects our governing and cultural attitudes even now. I also want to remind people that there have always been the outliers who provide something for others to aspire to.
Sept 9, 1867, Cininnati, OH — On this day Mr. And Mrs. Daniel Beasley welcomed their first child into the world Delilah Leontium, who would be the first of five children. Even in a segregated school she showed a great aptitude for learning, and she found she loved to write. She was also raised as a devout Catholic and her strong faith was one of the focal points of her in the South Ohio riverfront city.
At age 12 Delilah was already working on her dream and was submitting short society columns about her church and community to Black newspaper the Cleveland Gazette. At age 15 she was given the opportunity to write a regular column for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
She then began to be mentored by esteemed Black newspaperman and activist Daniel Rudd and wrote for his legendary national newspaper the Colored Catholic Tribune. Their devout Catholicism and Rudd’s reputation for guiding writers allowed the two to develop an excellent working relationship.
Then tragedy struck and Beasley's plans for her future as a journalist were disrupted. Although the details aren’t known, or in fact the years, Beasleys parents died nine months apart. Beasley never spoke or wrote on record about her family but notes on the 1880 census states both of her parents were bedridden and disabled. When one follows her career and notes the years between bylines it becomes obvious, she had to find jobs to take care of herself and likely her siblings.
Beasley initially took on a job as a maid but then took classes to become a masseuse and a nurse. These jobs did allow her to get out of Ohio. She worked in resorts and convalescent hospitals in Kentucky and Chicago. She became a traveler taking positions in New York, New Jersey and Michigan before finally landing in Oakland. She had gone to California in 1910 to care for one of her former patients, but it gave her time to start researching African American history as Rudd had taught her.
In the years she had been traveling she had read and researched about Black Americans and after arriving in California it struck her that there was little known about Blacks who had come to California and their place in the state’s history.
She took history classes at the University of California at Berkly; she also dug into the nitty gritty going through the back issues of Black owned newspapers, digging through the archival storage at museums finding and reading old letters at libraries. She even though she had not yet decided what she was going to do with the vast notes she had.
Beasley finally returned to her true calling in 1915 and began writing for the White newspaper the Oakland Tribune and for the Black owned Oakland Sunshine. There seemed to be two things driving this. Beasley had become a significant part of the community giving presentations on the history of Blacks in California at churches, in the newspapers and social meetings.
Her return to Journalism was also sparked by the way Whites had been reacting to the first motion picture blockbuster, “Birth of a Nation”. D.W. Griffith’s film might be considered epic given its scope but, in every way, it was White Supremacist propaganda. Black men were presented as drunken bums or sexual monsters throughout the film, and this was why the Ku Klux Klan was necessary. In her articles she summarized Booker T. Washington and other influential Blacks criticism of the film, but in a manner that was like Washington’s “Accommodationist’ belief’s (Washington strongly felt that Blacks should respect the segregationist position of the Whites while consistently focusing on their own communities for education, financial independence)
Beasley had been an advocate for civil rights most of her life and was active in California, but she did not take a radical approach. “If a bit of news would have a tendency to better our position in the community it should not only be published in the papers of own race but of theirs as well,” she explained in a column she wrote for the Oakland Sunshine.
In 1919 Beasley convinced the publisher of the Sunshine to help her publish her history of Blacks in California. Beasley published “The Negro Trail Blazers of California”, a study of black pioneers who had been left out of the history books, from early Spanish exploration of the region to westward expansion and the growth of the modern cities.
This book was such a well-researched and was well reviewed by most history professors and historians in California, although some did notice her grammar wasn’t scholarly.
Her book made her a bit of a minor celebrity, and it led to getting a column with the Oakland Tribune, “Activities Among the Negros” put Beasley in a prominent leadership position as the first African American with an outgoing column feature in a major metropolitan White newspaper. She used her column to highlight the success of African Americans across California and the United States. She highlighted institution success at laboratories, universities, unions and in business. Beasley said that she looked at her column as the way to show how Black Americans had the same morals, ingenuity and drive as White Americans.
Beasley was an active member of the Oakland chapter of the NAACP, The Alameda County League of Women Voters, The Public Welfare League of Alameda County, The Oakland Council of Church Women (she was the first African American on the council). Beasley would continue working to advance the rights of African Americans and women through her writing and civic activities until her death in 1934.
Sources:
“Delilah L. Beasley and the Trail She Blazed” CSUN University Library 2019
“Delilah Beasley |The Pioneering Black Historian Who Was Almost Erased from History” The New York Times Feb 7, 2020
“We Were Being Erased” East Bay Yesterday, Episode 60 April 6, 2020
“Raising Her Voice: African American Women Journalists Who Changed History” pg 72-83 by Rodger Streitmatter. University of Kentucky Press 2014
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