Black women journalists have not been hampered by the sexist attitudes of men to the same degree that white women journalists have been. Since this theme was introduced a century ago, individual case studies have continued to reinforce it. Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Delilah Beasley and Ida B. Wells were nineteenth-century women whose journalistic success was supported by their male editors; Marvel Cooke, Lucile Bluford and Ethel Payne have enjoyed similar relationships in the twentieth century. Factors contributing to this tendency are that African-American women have a tradition of working outside the home, that African-American editors historically have been both journalists and racial activists, and that male editors have tended to treat African-American women journalists much as fathers treat their daughters.
