Would that all Afro-American women were inspired with the same zeal and determination found in this young lady. Journalism will be brightened by the poetical and prose writings of Kate D. Chapman; for, as Miss L. W. Smith says of her—"She has read much, and will write much."
Mrs. Josephine Turpin Washington, Prominent Newspaper Contributor.
Mrs. Washington first saw the dawn of day in Goochland county, of the Old Dominion state, July 31, 1861. Her parents were Augustus A., and Maria V. Turpin. She was taught to read by a lady who was employed in the family. Subsequently moving to Richmond, she graduated from the normal and high schools and the Richmond Institute, now the Richmond Theological Seminary. From there she entered Howard University, graduating from the college department in the class of 1886. She has held positions in both of her alma maters, having resigned the one in the latter to marry Dr. Samuel H. H. Washington, now a practising physician in Birmingham, Ala.
She is a scholarly woman, and has acquitted herself most creditably in many walks of life, which have necessitated a highly intellectual brain and a pureness of heart. She has held a position as teacher in Selma University, Ala., and also as copyist under Hon. Fred Douglass, when Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, to whom she owes a debt of gratitude for kind acts and personal friendship.
Mrs. Washington gained her literary reputation while Miss Turpin. Just where she began her work is not definitely known, but it seems as though she were born with an inclination to write, so early did she manifest a disposition to do so. Her first publication appeared in The Virginia Star, in 1877, regarding which a writer says: "About this time
