Vivid

by Beverly Jenkins

Every advance the race made was necessary if it was to survive. More women like Maria W. Stewart were needed, not fewer. In 1832 Miss Stewart, a Black woman, became the first American woman of any race to lecture to public audiences. And there was Mary Shadd, who in 1853 grew tired of being vilified in Henry Bibb's Black abolitionist weekly, The Voice of the Fugitive, and so founded The Provincial Freeman in response. By doing so she became one of the first women, and the first Black woman on the North American continent, to edit and publish a newspaper. Vivid herself owed a tremendous debt to another pioneering Black woman, Miss Rebecca Lee. Fifteen years after Elizabeth Blackwell became the first American woman to gain a degree in medicine, Rebecca Lee received hers from the New England Medical College. Had Miss Lee not pursued her dream, Vivid might not have been afforded the opportunity to succeed on her own.