Biography
Early Life
Delilah Beasley was an early twentieth-century African American woman journalist in the United States. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on September 9, 1867.
Beasley was a skilled student who showed a passion for journalism at an early age. As a teenager, she reported on events that were published in both Black and white-owned newspapers.
After she lost both her parents, she decided to develop skillsets as a nurse, masseuse, and cosmetologist. She lived in Ohio for a time but eventually settled in northern California around 1910.
Activist Journalism
In Oakland, Beasley quickly became an active member of the Black community and jumped back into journalism. She was part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Linden Young Women’s Christian Association.
She wrote a host of articles in the Oakland Sunshine and Oakland Tribune. Beasley also published “Slavery in California” in The Journal of Negro History in 1918. Her “Activities Among Negroes” was featured in the Oakland Tribune for over a decade. She has been credited with being the first African American woman in California to have a regular column in a major newspaper.
Her most notable publication was The Negro Trailblazers in California (1919), which chronicles the Black pioneer experience in the West. She expressed in her preface, “dear reader, this book has been made possible by friends ever helping on up the hill with the load,” and ‘May God never let me be unmindful or ungrateful of my friends.”
Religious Identity
Beasley was a devout Roman Catholic and a member of The Cathedral of Saint Francis de Sales in Oakland. Her faith and involvement with the Oakland Council of Church Women motivated her through recurring health struggles. Her determination to chronicle African American history in the West with little financial compensation also served as motivation.
Beasley died in 1934. Her life of service and sacrifice was deeply appreciated by the faith community in California. Her last rites were held at the Cathedral of Saint Francis. In addition, the Oakland Council of Church Women organized a city-wide memorial at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Oakland Tribune reported that “a large number of persons from various racial groups assembled, at which time the many beautiful and interesting activities of Miss Beasley were fittingly portrayed in words, music, and song.”
