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Eliza Jane Nicholson (1843-1896)
Eliza Jane Nicholson bears the distinction of being the first woman owner of a major newspaper in the nation. Born in 1843 near Pearlington, Mississippi, she enjoyed writing from a young age and, against her family’s wishes, moved to New Orleans to pursue her dream of being a professional journalist. She became the literary editor of the Daily Picayune in 1870 and wrote under the pseudonym Pearl Rivers. Two years later, she married the owner of the newspaper, Alva Holbrook, and inherited it when he died, in 1876. The newspaper was in financial trouble, but through her management it became profitable once again. She was an outspoken proponent of women in the workforce and equal pay. Nicholson hired and mentored other female journalists, most notably Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, the nationally syndicated advice columnist who went by the nom de plume Dorothy Dix. She also was a founding member of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Sylvanie Williams (1855-1921)
As a middle-class African American growing up in Reconstruction-era New Orleans, Sylvanie Williams witnessed the struggles that blacks faced in fighting for their rights and livelihoods. She especially sympathized with African American women and worked to support them. As president of the local Phillis Wheatley Club, which was affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women, she steered the club’s 1896 opening of a nursing school for young black women. In 1901, the club also established a kindergarten and day care program for working women. At a time when black women were being excluded from the larger suffrage movement,
Williams and the Phillis Wheatley Club advocated for African American woman suffrage. She served as a vice president of the National Association of Colored Women. Williams died in 1921, and in 1933 an elementary school was named in her honor. —AMANDA MCFILLEN
B Pen and case belonging to Eliza Jane Nicholson
between i860 and 1896
gift of Mrs. Ashton Fischer and Mrs. Carl
Corbin, 1981.369.58.7 a,b
C.	Eliza Jane Nicholson
between 1892 and 1894; collodion print^ gift of Mrs. Ashton Fischer and Mrs. Carl Corbin, 1981.369.44
D Sylvanie Williams
from The Colored American: From Slavery to Honorable Citizenship by J. W. Gibson and W. H. Crogman Atlanta: J. L. Nichols & Co., 1905 courtesy of the New York Public Library
Spring 2016