AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN JOURNALISTS AND THEIR MALE EDITORS - A TRADITION OF SUPPORT

Black women journalists have not been hampered by the sexist attitudes of men to the same degree that white women journalists have been. Since this theme was introduced a century ago, individual case studies have continued to reinforce it. Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Delilah Beasley and Ida B. Wells were nineteenth-century women whose journalistic success was supported by their male editors; Marvel Cooke, Lucile Bluford and Ethel Payne have enjoyed similar relationships in the twentieth century. Factors contributing to this tendency are that African-American women have a tradition Of working outside the home, that African-American editors historically have been both journalists and racial activists, and that male editors have tended to treat African-American women journalists much as fathers treat their daughters.