Delaney, Emma Beard (1871-1922)
Autograph Postcard Signed 13 June 1912.

Photo postcard featuring a small portrait of Delaney, and inspirational missionary-themed quotes, with a message handwritten and signed by Delaney on the back, to a Master Laurence Jefferson, of Halesite, New York, some signs of smudging and old creases, with Transatlantic Post Office postmark, 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.

Text written mid-ocean on the way to Liberia on a Christian missionary voyage. Delaney was one of the earliest African American missionaries to work in Africa. An 1894 graduate of Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, she finished formal missionary training two years later, and traveled to Africa for the first time in 1902. Upon arrival, she became the first African American woman missionary to arrive on the continent. The present postcard was composed on a later mission to Monrovia. During this venture, she established the Suehn Industrial Venture (1916) and stayed until disruption because of the first world war forced her back to the U.S. in the fall of 1920.