ABSTRACT
In 1895, Mrs. Sylvia Maples, a Black clubwoman from Tennessee argued, “ The Ladies’ Home Journal is the intellectual, social, and political medium of the women and of the white woman, more especially so. It does not in a single particular touch our interests and our peculiar race wants. . . .” 2 In fashioning the Ladies’ Home Journal as the quintessential white woman’s magazine, Mrs. Maples sought to rally Black women’s support for The Woman’s Era , the earliest known periodical published for and by African American women. Mrs. Maples argued that the Woman’s Era , unlike the Ladies’ Home Journal , served as Black women’s “ own representative.” 3 The editors of The Woman’s Era shared Mrs. Maples’ sentiment. For them, the Woman’s Era would not only appeal to Black women’s distinctive interests, but it would also provide a journalistic space where Black women would be “more accurately represented than [they] are or ever [could] be in any paper that has no colored man or woman on its editorial staff.” 4 As the only Black magazine operating in its time, it offered a unique platform to construct Black womanhood.
