The general lack of success that the dissident press experienced at the end of the nineteenth century did not dissuade an unlikely pair of early twentieth-century editors—different not only in their crusade of choice but also in their race, their gender, and their class—from embarking, virtually single-handedly, on campaigns that all sense of reason dictated were doomed to unmitigated failure.
Nevertheless, these two visionary activists-cum-journalists raced full throttle into the dark abyss of uncertainty. The first attempted to mobilize the millions of Americans of African descent who were confined to poverty and deprivation in the rural South; the second set out on the equally daunting task of empowering the throngs of poor immigrant women who had recently been drawn to America’s shores.
Driven by an extraordinary storehouse of courage, will, ability, and “spirit of revolt,” the pair of fearless editors showed—in a textbook example of the power of the dissident press—that a single individual truly can inspire social change of titanic proportion.