In the professions, such as medicine and law, and in scholarship as well, the Negro woman has blazed a path. One year after Oberlin College in Ohio was founded in 1833, thirty years before the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the trustees took the advanced ground of admitting Negro men and women on equal terms with other students. Of the Northern colleges and universities Oberlin still leads in the number of its Negro women graduates, but in recent years other such institutions as Radcliffe, Wellesley, Columbia, and Chicago have been represented in an increasing number by those who have finished their work creditably and even with distinction in many instances. More and more each year are young women at these institutions going forward to the attainment of the higher scholastic degrees. In connection with medicine we recall the work in the war of the Negro woman in the related profession of nursing. It was only after considerable discussion that she was given a genuine opportunity in Red Cross work, but she at once vindicated herself. In the legal profession she has not only been admitted to practice in various places, but has also been appointed to public office. It must be understood that such positions as those just remarked are not secured without a struggle, but all told they indicate that the race through its womanhood is more and more taking part in the general life of the country.
In keeping with the romantic quality of the race it was but natural that from the first there should have been special effort at self-expression in literature, music, and other forms of art. The first Negro woman to strike the public imagination was Phillis Wheatley, who even as a young girl wrote acceptable verse. Her _Poems on Various Subjects_ published in 1773 at once attracted attention, and it was fitting that the first Negro woman to become distinguished in America should be one of outstanding piety and nobility of soul. Just a few years before the Civil War Frances Ellen Watkins, better known as Mrs. F. E. W. Harper, entered upon her career as a writer of popular poetry. At the present time attention centers especially upon Mrs. Georgia Douglas Johnson, who early in 1918 produced in _The Heart of a Woman_ a little volume of delicate and poignantly beautiful verse, and from whom greater and greater things are expected, as she not only has the temperament of an artist but has also undergone a period of severe training in her chosen field. In the wider field of prose--including especially stories, essays, and sketches--Mrs. Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson is prominent. In 1899 she produced _The Goodness of St. Rocque, and other stories_, and since then has continued her good work in various ways. The whole field of literature is a wide one, one naturally appealing to many of the younger women, and one that with all its difficulties and lack of financial return does offer some genuine reward to the candidate who is willing to work hard and who does not seek a short cut to fame.