LETTER: Typed letter signed by the first black female missionary to Africa.
[Education] Delaney, Emma B. Typed letter signed, to “Dear Christian Friend,” with autograph note,
“I will sail for Africa in April, pray for me.Anytime you write to Fernandina, Fla. Box 790…I will receive
it. E.B.D.” January 5, 1912; one leaf of Department of Missions, Among Children letterhead, recto only.
A fund-raising appeal, probably prepared in 1902 when Emma B. Delany (1871-1922) first sailed to
present-day Malawi, as she writes here, “…to help build a Girls’ Dormitory in Africa where your less
favored sisters can be taught...get on your knees before you seal this offering.... keeping before you the
enslaved and degraded womanhood desiring to rise with unbound bodies to accept deliverance and
protection for body, education for the mind, and a hope for the soul that God can give only through his
word....”
When she wrote this letter, the Spelman College alumna, said to be the first Black woman missionary to
Africa, was about to sail for Liberia, where she spent the last ten years of her life running a mission near
Monrovia that provided education and health care to African women. Delany (now often spelled
“Delaney”) returned to America in 1922, but died soon after of tropical fever. Her letters are rare.
(#4655566)
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