It Meant Much More For a African American Woman

Ask yourself, "if I was African American in the late 19th and early 20th century, what would I find myself doing all day in my leisure time?" Most people, at first thought would say tending to household duties, taking care of family, friends, or neighbors, trying to find work, or even understanding exactly what it means to be a free independent African American in the United States. If you answered with these answers you are on an accurate road, but what would you say the other half of African Americans did in between the time they were not tending those specific duties at times? Would you argue that some actually had time to sit down and read books, magazines, and newspapers? Because in fact they did!

                            During the late 19th and early 20 century black entertainment was just getting started. This was a time when a hand full of blacks were still trying to close the gap on being illiterate. They understood that they needed community were blacks could get information about other blacks apposed to other whites. The magazines, or newspaper and advertisement had information that one, would keep blacks informed on the latest news, jobs, schools, and two, keep them informed on new trends, recipes, cooking utensils, and even how other blacks were living day to day. Popular Magazines that I would consider to have been the most beneficially to blacks during this time period included "Ringwood's Afro American Journal of fashion, Half Century Magazine for the Colored Homemaker, and the Tan Confessions. 

(1950's)

(1950's) What Tan Eventually became

-Tan Confessions ( What Tan Confessions eventually grew into)

While doing research on leisure time for blacks, I found that "Julia Ringwood Coston" was among the few blacks that had ever edited a Magazine during her time. She exclaimed also that her rational for doing articles that related to blacks was to in fact bring them closer. By bringing blacks closer, things in the articles would talk about other things that Afro Americans might be donig, and if it was working out as planned, or how other black children were doing. It seemed as if Julia realized that by having other blacks understand what was going around in the community, they could all come together and be more beneficial to each other.

It was very hard to find a lot about Leisure time about blacks because this time period was also the time period were blacks, although may have been free were not always treated as so. I will also say that during this time period it was substantially harder for a black male or female to get his her her work out for anyone to read and look at.  
Another interesting thing that I did find out by doing this project was that whites had more entertainment activities to choose from. They had more magazines, more books and more newspapers than blacks. I found out that most of the things that blacks read had basely come from the magazines that whites read like the True Confessions. A predominantly white magazine that is almost like the blacks magazined " The Tan Confessions.