"To Be Up and Doing":Kate Markham Power's Crusade Journalism and Case Against Woman Suffrage in the Postbellum South Pete Smith In the first editorial of her weekly Kate Power's Review (dated September 1, 1894), journalist and editor Kate Markham Power (18651946) laid out a simple case for having her own periodical: "There is room for the paper in Mississippi," she said. "The women want it …" ("To My Readers" 4). At first glance, then, the Review appeared to be a progressive call-to-arms, an opportunity to speak frankly and honestly about the circumstances and conditions of the southern woman in the late nineteenth century. Specifically, Power's practice of what historian Christopher B. Daly calls "crusade journalism" was an attempt to speak to the needs of the white, underprivileged women of the state—those overburdened with the duties of work and home, orphans, or those citizens too ill or disabled to help themselves. As part of her crusade, Power also used her journalism to tout educational opportunities for working- and middle-class women, as she drew attention to the importance of their work (in fields such as teaching) and the need to offer her assistance in their educational pursuits. Power's "crusade" also included a campaign against woman suffrage, as she saw the movement as a threat to the divine sanctity of southern womanhood—the idea that women like Power were meant to serve as the moral guardians of hearth and home and not to participate in "immoral" and "distasteful" acts, like voting, relegated to the public sphere. Accordingly, she set out to convince her readers that a woman's public participation should be limited to using her social influence to help those in need. [End Page 387] Evidence from her own weekly publication, as well as two different syndicated editorial columns, "Mississippi Matters" and the "Educational Bureau," demonstrates how Power used her professional and social standing to attempt to persuade her readers that woman suffrage was a threat to traditional gender roles and nineteenth-century southern hegemony.1 Power was not the only woman of her socioeconomic background to criticize woman suffrage, of course, but she was the first woman in the state to use journalism to publicly announce an anti-suffrage agenda. Power's campaign against woman suffrage stood in sharp contrast to the views of at least one other Mississippi woman of social standing and public influence: writer and politician Belle Kearney. Kearney, like Power, was a daughter of the Old South who believed in the dominance of the white race, but Kearney insisted that woman suffrage could be a useful tool to help "ensure immediate and durable white supremacy" (Perreault 49n3). Briefly contrasting the opinions of these two women, both in positions of influence and from similar backgrounds, shows the complicated nature of the suffrage issue, especially in relation to the strict ideals of southern womanhood in the postbellum era. In fact, as a review of the relevant literature reveals, Power was part of a small but dynamic generation of women journalists whose professional and personal experiences were shaped by the strict ideological, economic, and social circumstances they faced. Power in Context Academic literature provides some details as to the career paths of nineteenth-century women journalists and editors from the southern [End Page 388] states. Jonathan Daniel Wells documents the careers of numerous women of early nineteenth-century literary periodicals, including Sarah Hillhouse, who ran a four-page weekly, the Monitor, in northeastern Georgia ("A Voice" 168); Mary Chase Barney of Baltimore, who began editing National Magazine, or Ladies' Emporium, in the 1830s (169–71); and Caroline Gilman of Charleston, South Carolina, whose literary magazine Southern Rose earned her a favorable, regional reputation (174–75). The careers highlighted in Wells's research foreshadow the accomplishments of the next generation of journalists and editors, Kate Power included. The women of the early nineteenth century, for instance, used their publications to advance specific political and social positions—the importance of a formal education for women, criticism of elected officials, and freedom of speech and religion, among others (Wells, "A Voice in the Nation"). Even so, the women of Kate Power...
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Dec 16, 2023
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