Race Literature

Scholarship on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century religious periodicals, particularly Black publications, remains sparse and often focuses on the theological contributions of male writers. Race Literature: Women Contributors to the “A.M.E. Church Review,” 1884–1924 fills a gap by examining the prose contributions of over three dozen women writers to the quarterly publication of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination during this important postbellum, pre-Harlem era. An important work of recovery, Race Literature enriches our understanding of Black women’s intellectual history and the role these women writers played in addressing critical issues of their time.

While the A.M.E. Church Review published poetry, fiction, and drama from women writers, author Cynthia Lee Patterson shifts the focus to the important prose essays contributed to the quarterly. These women used their contributions to claim cultural authority for Black women, answering Victoria Earle Matthews’s 1895 call for a “race literature.” Some of these contributors—Fanny Jackson Coppin, Frances E. W. Harper, Gertrude Mossell, and Katherine Tillman—established literary reputations in their own day and remain salient in recent scholarship. Race Literature extends our understanding of Black women’s intellectual history by recovering biobibliographical information for the lesser-known contributors to the quarterly.