NOTES
- Delilah Beasley, “Colored Race at the Exposition,” Oakland Sunshine, June 26, 1915.
- Ibid. The movie “The Clansman,” by D.W. Griffith, premiered in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 1915. The movie was based on a 1905 Thomas Dixon novel and play of the same name, but after the movie began touring the nation and at the behest of Dixon, Griffith changed the title to “Birth of a Nation.” Beasley was actively involved in The National Association of Colored People's campaign protesting the movie as it opened in theaters around the country. When Washington mentioned the play, he actually was talking about the movie version; at the time, movies were sometimes called photoplays. See Kimberly Mangun, “‘As Citizens of Portland We Must Protest’: Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the African American Response to D.W. Griffith's ‘Masterpiece,’” Oregon Historical Quarterly 107 (Fall 2006): 382.
- Lawrence P. Crouchett, Lonnie G. Bunch, III and Martha Kendall Winnacker, The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977(Oakland: Northern California Center for Afro-American History and Life, 1989), 22.
- Joyce Henderson, ed., Earl Warren Oral History Project (Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 1974), 78–79. The observation by Tarea Hall Pittman, an NCAA official and civil rights worker in Oakland, is substantiated by a body of research on black portrayals in the mainstream press. For more on white characterizations of African Americans in the mainstream press, see Carolyn Martindale, The White Press and Black America (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986); Roland E. Wolseley, The Black Press, U.S.A. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1971), 18, 52; William G. Jordan, Black Newspapers and America's War for Democracy, 1914–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 1, 135–37; and Paul Fisher and Ralph Lowenstein, Race and the News Media (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), 7, 63–72. Also, in my observation of the newspaper published on the days that Beasley's columns appeared, I found one instance of an African American included on the pages of the Oakland Tribune: a photograph with an extended caption by Cohen (no first name listed). See “Juveniles Who Will Appear in Christmas Follies,” Oakland Tribune, Dec. 16, 1928.
- Lorraine Jacobs Crouchett, Delilah Leontium Beasley: Oakland's Crusading Journalist (El Cerrito, Calif.: Downey Place Publishing, 1990).
- See Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), 211; Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), 126–27; and Oakland Tribune Yearbook, January 1920, 17. The latter was a newspaper supplement.
- Crouchett, Bunch, and Winnacker, The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977, 18.
- Ibid.
- Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race and Reform in the Progressive Era (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 1–9.
- Nina Mjagkij, Light in the Darkness: African Americans and the YMCA, 1852–1946 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 101–02.
- Gayle Gullett, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women's Movement, 1880–1911 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000). Also see Gayle Gullett, “Women Progressives and the Politics of Americanization in California, 1915–1920,” Pacific Historical Review 64 (February 1995): 73.
- Elizabeth Lindsay Davis, Lifting as They Climb (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), 189. The original manuscript was completed in 1933. Also see Rodger Streitmatter, Raising Her Voice: African-American Women Journalists Who Changed History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 75. Streitmatter wrote that Beasley submitted unsigned articles to the Cincinnati Enquirer and as a result her contribution is not on record.
- Crouchett, Delilah Leontium Beasley, 4.
- Ibid., 5.
- Ibid., 4–5.
- Announcement in the Oakland Tribune, Feb. 11, 1915. A power struggle embroiled the paper after the death of its publisher, William E. Dargie, in 1911 between his widow, Herminia Peralta; Joseph R. Knowland, the former U.S. senator; and Captain Antonio Rodriguez Martin, whom Dargie's widow met and became fond of while visiting Spain. Knowland won control of the Tribune on Nov. 3, 1915. Also see Gayle B. Montgomery and James W. Johnson, One Step from the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 9–17; and “Oakland Case,” Time, Aug. 14, 1939, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0.9171.761848.00.html (accessed on May 11, 2009).
- Delilah Beasley, Negro Trail Blazers of California (1919; reprint, New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1998). In the preface, Beasley thanked Loomis for accepting her articles for publication in the Tribune.
- Crouchett, Bunch, and Winnacker, The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977, 21.
- Montgomery and Johnson, One Step from the White House, 9–14.
- See California Newspaper Hall of Fame, California Newspaper Publisher's Association Web site, at www.cnpa.com/CalPress/hall/index.htm (accessed on March 3, 2007).
- See Joseph Knowland, California: A Landmark History: Story of the Preservation and Making of Early Day Shrines (Oakland, Calif: Tribune Press, 1941).
- Thomas C. Fleming, a journalist with the San Francisco Sun Reporter, one of the San Francisco Bay area's oldest black newspapers, described his interactions with the Knowland family in the 1920s and 1930s. He believed the reason that the Tribune hired Beasley stemmed partly from the Knowland's “benign paternalism toward the black community.” See “Senator Billy Knowland,” The Free Press, Reflections on Black History, Part 61, at www.freepress.org/fleming/fleming61.html (accessed on March 3, 2007).
- Nellie Y. McKay, “Introduction,” in Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman in a White World (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), xxxi.
- Ibid., xxv.
- Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 188–95.
- Streitmatter, Raising Her Voice, 81.
- Peter the Great brought Abram Petrovich Gannibal to Russia as an African slave at the age of six or seven. See Frances Somers Cocks, The Moor of St. Petersburg: In the Footsteps of a Black Russian (London: Goldhawk Press, 2005).
- Henderson, Earl Warren Oral History Project, 78–79. This observation is supported by subsequent research of mainstream media treatment of African-American life. See note 5.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Oct. 2, 1927.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, June 7, 1931.
- Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 188–90.
- Ibid., 277.
- Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “Clubwomen and Electoral Politics in the 1920s,” in Ann D. Gordon with Bettye Collier-Thomas, et al., eds., African American Women and the Vote, 1837–1965 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 149. Though on the face this seemed to imply that Beasley was more interested in segregation than integration, her columns showed a much more complex viewpoint. They emphasized a desire among African Americans to collaborate with white organizations for equal access and equal opportunities, but they did not necessarily call for the wholesale integration of white groups or the elimination of black civic groups. Indeed, many of her entries on integration and inter-racial relations seemed to rise out of a desire for respect and acknowledgement from whites for black achievements and leadership, something that Beasley did not think would emerge easily from the complete integration of white organizations.
- Higginbotham, “Clubwomen and Electoral Politics in the 1920s,” 147.
- Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 190.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, April 16, 1925.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Feb. 28, 1926.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Jan. 9, 1927.
- Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 191.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, June 6, 1926.
- Ethel M. Smith, Toward Equal Rights for Men and Women (Washington, D.C.: Committee on the Legal Status of Women, National League of Women Voters, 1929), 131–32. This was found on the Library of Congress’ Rare Book and Special Collections Division Web site, which is part of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, at memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html (accessed on Dec. 28, 2008).
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, May 10, 1925.
- Ibid.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, May 18, 1930.
- Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 192.
- Ibid.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, May 18, 1930.
- See Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, July 25, 1926; Crouchett, Bunch, and Winnacker, The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977, 26; and Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 70.
- Crouchett, Bunch, and Winnacker, History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977, 26.
- See Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Jan. 8, 1928, and April 20, 1930; and Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 193.
- Lucretia Grady also was the wife of Henry Francis Grady, the dean of the University of California's College of Commerce, which later became the Haas School of Business. In 1934, Henry Grady became a trade advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, March 11, 1928.
- See Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Jan. 27, 1929; Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 193; and Henderson, Earl Warren Oral History Project, 21–27.
- See Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Jan. 27, 1929; Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 193; and Henderson, Earl Warren Oral History Project, 21–27.
- “Along the Color Line,” The Crisis 36 (Oct. 1929): 346.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, 27 January 1929, p. 9T; Davis, Lifting as They Climb, p. 193; and Henderson, Earl Warren Oral History Project, 21–27.
- Ibid.
- Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 194.
- Henderson, Earl Warren Oral History Project, 21–26.
- Davis, Lifting as They Climb, 194.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, March 17, 1929.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Aug. 4, 1929.
- Crouchett, Bunch, and Winnacker, The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977, 23.
- Mjagkij, Light in the Darkness, 101–14.
- See Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Sept. 20, 1925; Jan. 3, 1926; and May 30, 1926.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Sept. 20, 1925.
- Delilah Beasley, “Activities Among Negroes,” Oakland Tribune, Jan. 30, 1927.
- Couchett, Bunch, and Winnacker, The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977, 36–37.
- Ibid.
- Henderson, Earl Warren Oral History Project, 79–81.