Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (February 19, 1870 – November 29, 1923) was an American writer.

Early life

Katherine Davis Chapman was born in

Mound City, Illinois Mound City is a city and the county seat of Pulaski County, Illinois, United States. It is located along the Ohio River just north of its confluence with the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 588. History Mound Ci ...

, the daughter of Laura and Charles Chapman.

Claudia Tate Claudia Tate (December 14, 1947 – July 29, 2002)Yolanda Williams Page (ed.)"Claudia Tate (1946-2002)" ''Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers'', Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007, pp. 544–56. was a noted literary critic and professo ...

, ed.
''The Works of Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman''
in ''The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers'' (Oxford University Press 1991). p3-65 Her mother was a teacher. She did not attend school until moving to Yankton, South Dakota at about the age of twelve; her father raised hunting dogs in Yankton. She attended the State University of Kentucky (later called Simmons College of Kentucky) and

Wilberforce University Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates in t ...

Career

In high school, Chapman began to write poetry and to correspond with periodicals and newspapers. Her first poem, "Memory", appeared in print in 1888, in ''

The Christian Recorder ''The Christian Recorder'' is the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and is the oldest continuously published African-American newspaper in the United States. It has been called "arguably the most powerful black periodic ...

''. That year she published a series of articles in ''The Christian Recorder'' and ''American Baptist'' which brought her some fame. She was also a contributor to the magazine, ''Our Women and Children'' and to the ''Indianapolis Freeman''.Penn, Irvine Garland. The Afro-American press and its editors. Willey & Company, 1891. p388-392 She would also write short stories, poetry, essays, and plays, and frequently contributed to religious magazines such as the nationally distributed '' A. M. E. Church Review''. Fiction by Tillman included the novellas ''Beryl Weston's Ambition: The Story of an Afro-American Girl's Life'' (1893) and ''Clancy Street'' (serialized, 1898-1899). She wrote historical plays, ''Thirty Years of Freedom'' (1902) and ''Fifty Years of Freedom'' (1910). Her book of poetry, ''Recitations'', was published in 1902. Her themes are often uplifting messages, especially addressed at young black women, as in this exhortation from "Afro-American Women and their Work" (1895):

''We have been charged with mental inferiority; now, if we can prove that with cultivated hearts and brains, we can accomplish the same that is accomplished by our fairer sisters of the Caucasian race, why then, we have refuted the falsehood.''

As a pastor's wife, she lived in various states, taught and lectured, and worked with church women's groups and missionary organizations. She was an officer of the

National Association of Colored Women's Clubs The National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) is an American organization that was formed in July 1896 at the First Annual Convention of the National Federation of Afro-American Women in Washington, D.C., United States, by a merger of t ...

in the 1910s. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Katherine D. Tillman was appointed director of publicity for the National Association of Negro Women's Clubs, to highlight war work done by African-American women, with the Red Cross or in other capacities.

Personal life

Kate Chapman married the Rev. George M. Tillman in 1894. They had a daughter, Dorothy. Tillman fell ill and was hospitalized while attending the Eighth Quadrennial Convention of the Women's Parent Mite Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was held in Brooklyn on October 3–8, 1923. She died on Thanksgiving Day (November 29) in 1923. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a Katherine D. Tillman Missionary Society at Bethel A. M. E. Church in

Leavenworth, Kansas Leavenworth () is the county seat and largest city of Leavenworth County, Kansas, United States and is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 37,351. It is located on the west bank of t ...

, named in her memory."Fifth Night Sunday Service"
''Leavenworth Times'' (December 27, 1963): 6. via

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tillman, Katherine D. African-American dramatists and playwrights African-American poets African-American short story writers 1870 births 1923 deaths American women dramatists and playwrights American women essayists American women poets American women short story writers American women in World War I Wilberforce University alumni People from Mound City, Illinois People from Yankton, South Dakota Writers from Illinois Writers from South Dakota 19th-century American dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 19th-century essayists 20th-century American essayists 19th-century American poets 20th-century American poets 19th-century American short story writers 20th-century American short story writers 19th-century American women writers 20th-century American women writers 20th-century African-American women writers 20th-century African-American writers