from Part I - Transitions in African American Authorship, Publishing, and the Visual Arts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2021
The Colored Co-operative Publishing Company is known for launching the literary career of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Not only did it publish her first novel, Contending Forces (1900); it also published the Colored American Magazine, which Hopkins contributed to and edited. Few people know of the Colored Co-operative’s other publishing initiatives, however. This chapter explores the publication history of Ellen Wetherell’s In Free America; or, Tales from North and South (1901), the only other bound book published by the Colored Co-operative besides Contending Forces. Wetherell was a white woman from Lynn, Massachusetts. Before she rose to prominence in her local Socialist Party, she self-published an anti-lynching pamphlet and then expanded and published it as a book through the Colored Co-operative. I argue the publication of this book marks a critical moment of transition and fluidity in African American literary history, for it marks the moment when a Black publisher took deliberate, concrete steps to expand its sphere of influence beyond the Black community, and by empowering a local white author to find her national voice, the company claimed power for itself.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.