‘The Oakland Tribune’ Journalist Who Highlighted Black Excellence

In 1923, The Oakland Tribune started a groundbreaking new weekly column. “Activities Among Negroes” was authored by Delilah L. Beasley, a writer unwilling to waste even an inch of her column space. In her writing, Delilah not only bucked racist stereotypes by putting an emphasis on achievements in the Black community, but also managed to shine a light on the barriers that people of color, and women, faced in their everyday lives.

Even when she was writing about local issues, Delilah’s vision was big picture. She had an instinct and understanding that her column had the potential to act as a direct line to both the white establishment, which could affect legal change, and the average white household, which might encourage a social one. Beasley’s journalistic ambitions started when she was still in her teens and, from the beginning, crossed racial lines. Her earliest work was printed by African American newspaper The Cleveland Gazette and mainstream white publication, The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Born on September 9 in either 1867 or 1871, Delilah’s writing ambitions were temporarily halted in her teens after both of her parents died. After she and her four siblings were separated, Delilah was forced to drop out of school and become a maid for a judge in Cincinnati.

Determined to improve her position in life, Delilah studied hydrotherapy, medical gymnastics and other elements of anatomy until she was able to become a massage therapist. Over the years, Delilah worked in sanitariums and resorts in Illinois, New York and Michigan. For a time, Delilah was known for easing the physical woes of pregnant women via the medium of head massage. She eventually found herself in Northern California in 1910 after becoming a full-time nurse for one of her clients who had moved to Berkeley.

Once in California, Delilah began writing once more, delicately straddling racial divisions in the press. After writing about pro-KKK film Birth of a Nation for The Oakland Tribune in 1915, Delilah was forced to follow it up with a piece in the Oakland Sunshine defending her decision to do so. “News of special interest to us as a people ought to be discussed in our own papers among ourselves,” she wrote. “But, if a bit of news would have a tendency to better our position in the community, then it should not only be published in our own race papers, but in the papers of the other race as well.”

In 1919, Delilah self-published her book The Negro Trail-Blazers of California, which she had painstakingly researched over the course of eight years, inspired by history classes she took at U.C. Berkeley. Publishing the book herself was a risk that put her in debt for several years, but one that paid off in a larger sense, giving a voice to the Black pioneers who had largely been written out of history. In the foreword to the book, the managing editor of the California Eagle wrote of Delilah:

In gathering the data for this most unique volume, she has sacrificed money, and health. She, however, shall feel well repaid for her labor if, through the perusal of these pages, there shall be an incentive to even greater efforts by the Negro Race in this State in the future.

This wasn’t the only time Delilah made financial sacrifices to follow her calling — she earned far less writing for The Oakland Tribune than she would have made working full-time as a massage therapist.

After her profile was raised across the Bay Area, thanks in large part to her Tribune column, Delilah began to travel around the country in the hopes of persuading the editors of major newspapers everywhere to stop using racist language in print. She also regularly spoke at rallies and protests. So determined was Delilah to advance the rights of African Americans and women, she joined just about every civic club she could find. These included the NAACP, the National Association of Colored Women, the Linden Center Young Women’s Christian Association, the Alameda County League of Colored Women Voters and the Oakland Council of Church Women.

A group of young Black women in the East Bay were so inspired by Delilah’s commitment to these groups, they formed one of their own, named after her. Rodger Streitmatter’s 1994 book Raising Her Voice: African-American Women Journalists Who Changed History notes that: “Members defined their purpose by choosing a word to correspond to each letter in the name D-E-L-I-L-A-H L. B-E-A-S-L-E-Y: Deeds Ever Lasting In Lending A Hand. Let’s Be Ever Alert Serving Lovingly Every Year.”

Beasley’s activism and simultaneous work as a reporter sometimes meant that she found herself having to report on her own achievements. On such occasions, her humility shone through her text. “There was introduced Friday January 27 in the California Legislature an Anti-Lunching Bill at the request of this writer,” she wrote in 1933. “This writer knowing that the editors of The Oakland Tribune have for 20 years fought lynching through some editorials, decided to ask Assemblyman Wm. Knewland, assistant publisher of The Tribune to jointly introduce the bill with Assemblyman Frederick Madison Roberts of Los Angeles … Many women’s organizations endorsed the intentions of this writer to have this bill introduced.”

Delilah continued writing her column for the Tribune until her death in 1934. Buried in the Y section of St. Mary’s Cemetery in Oakland, her tombstone offers simply her name and dates. Delilah’s own words might have proved a more fitting tribute to her tenacity.

“Ever life casts its shadow,” she once wrote, “my life plus others make a peer to move the world. I, therefore, pledge my life to the living world of brotherhood and mutual understanding between the races.”

For stories on other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, click here.