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, the daughter of Laura and Charles Chapman.Claudia Tate, ed., The Works of Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman in The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers (Oxford University Press, 1991). pp. 3–65. Her mother was a teacher.Lawson Andrew Scruggs, Women of Distinction: Remarkable in Works and Invincible in Character (Scruggs 1893): 203–204. She did not attend school until moving to Yankton, South Dakota, at about the age of twelve;Williard B. Gatewood, Jr., "Kate D. Chapman Reports of the 'Yankton Colored People,' 1889", South Dakota History 7(1)(Winter 1976):32–35. her father raised hunting dogs in Yankton. She attended the State University of Kentucky (later called Simmons College of Kentucky) and Wilberforce University.
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.Kirsten Saunders, "Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman" in Emmanuel Sampath Nelson, ed., African American Authors, 1745–1945: Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Greenwood Publishing 2000): 396–399. . 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, pp. 388–392. 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.Robert L. Johns, "Katherine D. Tillman" in Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women, Book 2 (VNR AG 1996): 649–651. . 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)"Original Drama Will Be Played", Oakland Tribune (August 26, 1908): 10. via Newspapers.com. and Fifty Years of Freedom (1910). Her book of poetry, Recitations, was published in 1902.Claudia Tate, "Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman" in William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, eds, The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature (Oxford University Press 2001). . Her themes are often uplifting messages, especially addressed at young black women,Hanna Wallinger, "'Shrinking at No Lofty Theme': The Race Literature of Victoria Earle Matthews, Gertrude Mossell, and Katherine Tillman" in John Cullen Gruesser and Hanna Wallinger, eds, Loopholes and Retreats: African American Writers and the Nineteenth Century (LIT Verlag Münster 2009): 189. . 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."Keokuk, Iowa", The Bystander (March 6, 1914): 1. via Newspapers.com."Mrs. Rev. Tillman Writes to Iowa Club Women" The Bystander (June 28, 1912): 4. via Newspapers.com She was an officer of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs in the 1910s.John Russell Hawkins, Centennial Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Volume 1 (AME Church 1916): 228. During World War I, 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."To Report on Negro War Work", Evening Missourian (January 27, 1918): 1. via Newspapers.com.
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."A Noted Woman Dies. Editor and Manager of Women's Missionary Recorder. Passes Away". Kansas City Advocate, December 7, 1923.
In the 1960s and 1970s there was a Katherine D. Tillman Missionary Society at Bethel A. M. E. Church in Leavenworth, Kansas, named in her memory."Fifth Night Sunday Service", Leavenworth Times (December 27, 1963): 6. via Newspapers.com.
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