Lillian A. Lewis

Lillian A. Lewis (born in 1869) was the first African American woman journalist in Boston, Massachusetts. She started her career in the 1880s with the Boston Advocate, a Black community newspaper, and began writing for the Boston Herald in the 1890s. To disguise her gender, she used the pen name "Bert Islew."

Background Lillian Alberta Lewis was born in 1869 in Boston, Massachusetts. She was born at 66 Phillips Street in Beacon Hill, in the home of Lewis Hayden, who was a Black abolitionist and master of Boston's Underground Railroad.

Lewis was reportedly a gifted student with an interest in literature. While in high school, she began writing and delivering lectures on subjects such as temperance, usually with a thread of humor running through them. One lecture that was especially popular was "The Mantle of the Church Covereth a Multitude of Humbugs," which poked fun at pious hypocrisy.

On August 7, 1901, she married Ernest F. Feurtado, a Jamaican.

Career Lewis began writing for the Boston Advocate in 1889, using the pen name "Bert Islew" to disguise her gender. ("Islew" is an anagram of "Lewis".) That same year, she made headlines when she was admitted to the New England Woman's Press Association. Sales had been flagging when Lewis joined the Advocate, and her popular society column, They-Say, is credited with saving the paper. Monroe Alpheus Majors wrote of Lewis's work in 1893, "Her pen, as the sword, is ever drawn in defense of her race, and those who have had the honor of crossing weapons with her generally retire from the combat feeling that they have been vigorously fought."

In 1889, The New York Journal referred to Lewis as "bright, witty, sparking, and of practical thought." She was one of the first African American women to write for a white-run newspaper. Lewis's knowledge of type-writing secured her a position as private secretary to Max Eliot. She continued writing for the Boston Herald until 1901.

In 1920, Lewis became the first African American woman clerk in the Collector's Office at Boston City Hall. She retired in 1934.

Published works In 1925, Lewis published a book titled Peter Salem: Colored American Soldier of the American Revolution.