Newspaper Article

Black History Week 1: Tribute to Women

1998

Overview

Fannie Barrier was born Feb. 12, 1855 in Brockport, New York, to Anthony J. Barrier and Harriet Prince Barrier. In 1887 she married a promising law student, S. Laing Williams, and moved to Chicago. Fannie Barrier Williams gained notoriety at the Chicago World's Fair in May 1893 when she addressed the Departmental Congress of the National Association of Loyal Women of American Liberty at the World's Congress of Representative Women. In her speech, \"The Intellectual Progress and Present Status of the Colored Women of the United States Since the Emancipation Proclamation,\" she told the audience that Black women \"are the only women in the country for whom real ability, virtue and special talents count for nothing when they become applicants for respectable employment,\" (Sewall 1894). In 1894 Williams was nominated for membership in the elite White Chicago Women's Club. For 14 months, the club deliberated on admitting a Black woman. her controversial admission caused some members to withdraw from the club and forced the General Federation of Women's Clubs to confront the issue of Black female membership. Williams was the Chicago reporter for the Woman's Era, a monthly newspaper published by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and her daughter, Florida Ruffin Ridley. The newspaper disseminated news about and by Black women throughout the country. Williams supported the Era's call for a national Black female organization in the mid-1880s. \"Having long felt the inadequacy of the provisions made for the poor in our houses of worship, and knowing from sad experience that many devout believers, and humble followers of the lowly Jesus, are excluded from those courts, where the rich and the poor should meet together, shut out from those holy services by the mammon of unrighteousness, from that very church which declares the widow's mite to be more acceptable in sight of the Lord that the careless offerings of those who give of their \"abundance\" and wishing to do all in my power as far as God has given me the means to offer to the poor man and the stranger \"wine and milk without price and without cost.\"

• Publisher: Real Times, Inc
• Subject: African Americans / Black culture / Black people / Brown, Willa / Civil rights / Culture / Forth, Elizabeth / History / Human relations / Interpersonal communication / Minority & ethnic groups / Personal profiles / Personal relationships / United States / Williams, Fannie / Women / Womens rights movements