Fort Smith, Arkansas, resident, landowner, and activist Mame Stewart Josenberger was born in 1868/1872 in Owego, New York, to Frank and Mary Elizabeth (Turner) Stewart, both of whom had been born in Virginia. After attending the Owego Free Academy in New York, Josenberger earned a Bachelor of Arts in Education at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She graduated in 1888 along with scholar and political activist W.E.B. DuBois and Margaret Murray Washington, the third wife of Tuskegee Institute president Booker T. Washington.
During this same year, Stewart moved to Holly Springs, Mississippi, where she taught at the State Normal School for Negroes, known today as Rust College. The following year she relocated to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where she assumed a teaching position at Howard School, the second oldest school in the city, built in 1870 and named for Union General and Freedmen Bureau commissioner, Oliver Otis Howard. Josenberger also taught at the predominately African-American Lincoln High School. In 1892, she married African-American undertaker William Ernest Josenberger, whose father had been born in France. William was also a former Fort Smith postman. Josenberger gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Ernestine, in 1893. She died in 1919.
Josenberger left the teaching profession in 1901. In 1903, she was elected the Grand Register of Deeds of Arkansas of the Grand Order of Calanthe, a fraternal benefit organization founded in Texas in 1897 to provide burial insurance for African Americans. The Grand Order of Calanthe challenged racial stereotypes by promoting positive portrayals of African Americans. In 1915, the Supreme Court of Calanthe passed a resolution “promoting cultivation of negro ideals, reading of negro literature, possessing of negro pictures, the patronizing of negro business enterprises,” and “support of all interests tending to upbuild the negro race.” Josenberger served on a committee to revise Court of Calanthe rituals and remained the Grand Register of Deeds until 1916. In 1907, she was elected the organization’s Supreme Assistant Conductress and was the Supreme Orator of the “colored” Knights of Pythias in the 1920s.
Josenberger took over the family undertaking business after her husband died in 1909, the year she also joined Fort Smith’s St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church. As an African-American business owner, she was also a member of the National Negro Business League (NNBL), an organization founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1900 by Booker T. Washington. The NNBL’s goal was “to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro.”
Josenberger thoroughly imbibed the NNBL’s message of African-American financial uplift and continued to acquire property in addition to running the family undertaking business. She owned Josenberger Hall, an entertainment venue on 619 1/2 Ninth Street in Fort Smith and a hardware and retail store next door. Josenberger Hall was welcoming spot for African-American entertainers and performers until the early 1960s. In the 1940s for instance, Christine Chatman and Her Orchestra, King Kolax and His NBC Band, and Irvin C. Miller’s Brown Skin Models all performed there before Fort Smith’s black residents.
In 1913 she purchased property in Little Rock’s Taborian Heights area. Josenberger’s business acumen, which included a burial insurance company, served her well. She was considered “one of the most capable and efficient business propositions” and regarded as the “wealthiest as well as one of the most successful colored persons” in Fort Smith who owned a “palatial residence,” on 703 North 11th Street, and was considered “a true factor,” in making African Americans a “better race.” Indeed, not only was Josenberger a life member of the NNBL and the Fort Smith Negro Business League, she was a close friend of the Washingtons. In August 1915, she accompanied the couple on a cruise from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. After Washington’s death in 1915, NNBL members gathered in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1916 to memorialize their fallen leader. Mame Josenberger was among those who offered tributes.
In addition to running her businesses, Josenberger was affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the Arkansas Association of Colored Women (AACW). The NACW, formed in 1896, consisted of African-American women who dedicated themselves to the organization’s motto “Lifting As We Climb,” which underscored their reform activism in African-American communities nationwide. Suffrage for women and African Americans was a primary objective for black clubwomen in the early years of the 20th century and was among the many departments established by the NACW immediately after its founding. Josenberger attended the NACW’s sixth biennial session in Brooklyn, New York, in 1908. When the NACW met at Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1914, with Josenberger’s longtime friend, Margaret Murray Washington as president, the organization endorsed women’s suffrage.
Josenberger was involved with the national body from its early years. She served on the NACW’s “Peace Committee” following World War I, was its auditor in the early 1920s, and its first recording secretary in the 1930s. Indeed, she often interacted with such black women club leaders as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell (the NACW’s first president), and Nannie Burroughs (president of the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C.), who despite having to contend with marginalization and white suffragists’ racism, had long championed suffrage in the first two decades of the 20th century.
As an African-American woman club leader, Josenberger must have surely employed the NACW’s resources and her connections to advocate for suffrage women and black people in Arkansas. She was among the founders of Fort Smith’s Phillis Wheatley Federated Club in 1898, just two years after the NACW’s establishment and was its president for 56 years.
The AACW, organized in 1905, was dedicated to improving conditions in African-American communities throughout Arkansas. By 1909, the state federation consisted of 25 clubs and 500 members. Women’s suffrage, particularly black women’s suffrage, was among their concerns because it was essential to protecting African-American communities both in the North and the South. Although Arkansas women had won the right to vote in primary elections by legislative enactment in 1917, this victory largely eluded black women. However, they remained persistent. In 1920, for instance, following the 19th Amendment’s ratification, the Arkansas Gazette noted with concern that 122 black women members of the Little Rock-based Women’s Political League had paid poll taxes at the Pulaski County Collector’s office in response to an appeal from the National Women’s Suffrage Association. It is likely that these women were AACW members who, like Josenberger, positioned voting rights as an integral part of their activist agenda.
Josenberger was AACW president from 1929-1931. Additionally, she was on the board of Standard Life Insurance Company, an African-American-owned company in Atlanta, Georgia, and the board of directors of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association (along with Nannie Burroughs). The association memorialized Douglass’s home in Cedar Hill, Anacostia in Washington, D.C. Josenberger was also a lifetime member of the NAACP, yet another organization dedicated to black voting rights.
Both the NACW and the AACW were dedicated to helping African Americans access suffrage. Frustrated by their marginalization by white suffragists, black club women increasingly abandoned overt challenges to electoral politics and instead intensified their focus on antilynching and social reform activism, and international concerns through such organizations as the International Council of Women of the Darker Races (ICWDR). Arkansas’s Josenberger was an active member.
Established in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922 by Margaret Murray Washington, the ICWDR’s objective was the “dissemination of knowledge of people of color so that the world could better appreciate their history and accomplishment.” Although it only existed for 18 years, until 1940, its members included politically astute African-American women activists from around the country who dedicated themselves to international relations and world peace in the years following World War I. In 1923, Josenberger was elected treasurer and attended an ICWDR meeting in Washington, D.C., at the National Training School with such nationally known black women leaders as Mary McLeod Bethune (also one of its founding members) and Mary Church Terrell.
In subsequent decades, Josenberger remained involved with the NACW, the AACW, the ICWDR, the NNBL, and the NAACP, in addition to managing her businesses in Fort Smith. She was a successful Arkansas businesswoman, leader, and activist. Her organizational affiliations connected her to local and national black women leaders who employed their time, resources, and talent to improve African Americans’ economic, social, and political access. Mame Stewart Josenberger died in September 1964 and is buried in Oak Cemetery in Fort Smith.
Frank Lincoln Mather, Who’s Who of the Colored Race: A General Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women of African Descent (Chicago: n.p.: 1915), 165; 1920 United States Federal Census, www.ancestry.com
“Fisk Exercises to Open Today,” The Tennessean, Nashville, Tennessean, June 5, 1938, pg. 6. She and DuBois received alumni awards at this commencement.
Fon Louise Gordon, “Black Women in Arkansas.” Pulaski County Historical Review 35 (Summer 1987): 26-37.
Anna E. Walker, “Howard School,” The Journal of the Fort Smith Historical Society, Inc., 9 No. 1(April 1985): 11.
1900 United States Federal Census, www.ancestry.com.
“St. Paul,” The Appeal, Saint Paul, Minnesota, September 14, 1912, pg. 2; 1900 United States Federal Census, www.ancestry.com; U.S. City Directory, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1911. Josenberger’s daughter’s name is Ernestine in the directory.
“Changes in Court of Calanthe,” The Western Outlook, Oakland, California, January 29, 1916, no page.
“Mrs. M. A. Josenberger, State of Arkansas,” Topeka Plaindealer, Topeka, Kansas, August 12, 1921, pg. 6; “Women in Spotlight of Colored Pythians,” The Indianapolis News, Indianapolis, Indiana, August 21, 1929, pg. 12; “Ft. Smith, Arkansas,” The Plaindealer, Topeka, Kansas, April 15, 1938, pg. 4; “Black Teacher Became Leader in Education,” The Journal of the Fort Smith Historical Society, Inc., Vol. 40, No. 2, September 2016: 4
“Negro Undertaker Dead,” Arkansas Democrat, September 30, 1909, pg. 8.
“National Negro Business League.” (Accessed December 5, 2016).
U.S. City Directory, 1910, www.ancestry.com.
Images Courtesy of Fort Smith Museum of History, on loan from Mr. Herbert Norwood
“Real Estate Transfers,” Daily Arkansas Gazette, December 4, 1913, pg. 12.
“Seeing Fort Smith, Arkansaw: The Negroes and Their Wealth Engaged in All Sorts of Business,” Freeman, Indianapolis, Indiana, March 14, 1914, pg. 7; “Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Beautiful Southern City, the Home of Many Reputable, Enterprising Colored Citizens,” Topeka Plaindealer, Topeka, Kansas, September 22, 1916, pg. 2; “Fine Program Rendered by Popular Club,” The Chicago Defender, August 25, 1931, pg. 6.
“Dr. Washington Host on Trip to Nova Scotia,” The New York Age, New York, New York, August 19, 1915, pg. 7.
“Praise Booker T. Washington,” Great Bend Tribune, Great Bend, Kansas, August 17, 1916, pg. 5.
“Negro Women to Meet in Brooklyn Tomorrow,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, August 23, 1908, pg. 41.
“The N.A. of C.W.C. Very Successful Meet—Woman Suffrage Endorsed—Presentations—Several,” Cleveland Gazette, Cleveland, Ohio, August 14, 1914, pg. 2.
“Georgia Representative Gives Review of Great National Club Women's Meet in Fort Worth by Mrs. W. A. Scott Atlanta, Ga.,” The Capitol Plaindealer, Topeka, Kansas, August 6, 1937, pg. 2; Fon Louise Gordon, “Black Women in Arkansas.” Pulaski County Historical Review 35 (Summer 1987): 30-31; Partisan Politics Enters Ranks of the N.A.C.W.,” The Chicago Defender, August 7, 1937, pg. 17.
Evelyn Brooks Higganbotham, “In Politics to Stay: Black Women Leaders and Party Politics in the 1920s,” in Louise Tilly, Patricia Gurin, eds., Women, Politics, and Change (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992), 200.
“LHSAA Inducts Three to Hall of Honor,” The Lincoln Echo, Fort Smith, Arkansas, Volume 14, Issue 8, October 2006, front page.
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in The Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 82, 201.
Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (Troutdale, O.R.: NewSage Press, 1995), 317, 376.
“Negro Women Plan to Be in Election,” Arkansas Democrat, June 24, 1920, pg. 11; “Negro Women Pay Tax,” Daily Arkansas Gazette, June 25, 1920, pg. 10.
“Club Women to Hold Biennial Meeting in July,” The New York Amsterdam News, New York, New York, June 18, 1930, pg. 9.
Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, The African American Woman: Struggles and Images (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1997), 104.
“Douglass Memorial Ass’n To Increase Its Membership,” The Pittsburgh Courier, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 18, 1942, pg. 9.
“Colored Women Hold Three Day Session in Washington of World International Council,” The New York Age, New York, New York, August 18, 1923, pg. 5; Fatma Ramdani, “Afro-American Women Activists as True Negotiators in the International Arena, 1893-1945,” European Journal of American Studies, 10, no. 1 (2015): 7, 8; “International Council Holds Public Meeting: Women of Darker Races Make First Appearance After Four Years’ Work,” The Chicago Defender, August 16, 1924, pg. 10.
"Mame Steward Josenberger," www.findagrave.com (accessed December 5, 2016).
Cherisse Jones-Branch, Ph.D., a native of Charleston, South Carolina, is Professor of History and Director of the ASTATE Digital Press at Arkansas State University-Jonesboro where she teaches courses in U.S., women's, civil rights, rural, and African American history, and Heritage Studies. Dr. Jones-Branch received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the College of Charleston, South Carolina, and a doctorate in History from The Ohio State University, Columbus. Dr. Jones-Branch is the author of numerous articles on women’s civil rights activism. In 2014, she published "Crossing the Line: Women and Interracial Activism in South Carolina during and after World War II" (University Press of Florida) and is co-editor of the forthcoming "Arkansas Women: Their Lives and Times" (University of Georgia Press). She is also working on a second monograph, "Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps: Rural Black Women’s Activism in Arkansas" (University of Arkansas Press).