​HARPER AT 200

VICTORIA EARLE MATTHEWS

Katherine Davis Chapman was born on February 19, 1870 in Mount/Mound City, Illinois, to Laura and Charles Chapman. Chapman would spend her childhood in Yankton, South Dakota as her father ran a hunting dog business. During her time in Yankton, Chapman began to write poetry. Her first published poem, “Memory” appeared in The Christian Recorder in 1888. 

Chapman would continue to write, attending Louisville State University and later Wilberforce University. She would expand into essays, lectures, short stories, and plays that were often geared towards young black women. Despite her work reflecting traditional general roles, she also continuously asserted gender equality. 

Chapman married Reverend George M. Tillman in 1894 and they had one daughter, Dorothy. Chapman’s relationship strengthened with the AME church as their publication, AME Church Review, were among the firsts to distribute her work and Tillman was an AME Reverend.  

The National Association of Colored Women’s Club, an organization established in July 1896 by Harriet Tubman, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Ida B. Wells, Victoria Earle Matthews, and Margaret Murray Washington, aimed to uplift black women. Chapman became a notable member, officer, and later director of publicity in the 1910s, often traveling giving lectures like “The Ideal Negro Woman” in AME churches around the country. 

Even in declining health Chapman continued to show for AME events, including her last public appearance at the Golden Jubilee: The Eight Quadrennial Convention of the Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society of the American Methodist Episcopal Church in October 1923. She would give a report on her work as editor of the “Women’s Missionary Recorder.” 

Chapman’s date of death is unknown.