In 1972, Naomi Iris Bryant ’74 started a column called the Ebony Quill which featured the voices and perspectives of Black women. In 1979 it became a weekly section called Third World Voice and was uniquely reserved for the voices of women of color. The section had a separate staff from the newspaper publication. While the term “Third World” is now outdated, in 1979 the section was considered a historic and groundbreaking event. In the 1990s, Third World Voice became Voices! in order to more accurately describe the diversity of its contributors and breadth of focus.
Emily Bernstein ‘18 wrote a history of the column in the March 1, 2018 edition of Mount Holyoke News, titled “The paper struggles to feature voices of color”:
“How does one share Blackness with non-Blacks?” asked columnist Naomi Iris Bryant ’74 in the inaugural edition of The Ebony Quill. Bryant wrote: “Sharing Blackness is understanding how to take a pinch of happiness and live joyfully with it for a lifetime,” she wrote. “Sharing Blackness is going to a Seven Sisters school and having ‘[N—–]’ shouted at you from a car of teenage boys in Holyoke, Mass…Sharing Blackness is, anyway, something not learned, but earned.”
The column also revealed racism on campus. In one edition, a letter to the editor expressed distaste for Denise McLeod’s writing. McLeod ‘74, who took over as Ebony Quill columnist on Feb. 8, 1973, contributed thought-provoking and poetic content about race, representation, and being Black at Mount Holyoke. She responded: “Blacks on this campus know [racism] exists… It is too bad that a column like ‘The Ebony Quill’ had to be invented to let the rest of the campus know that it is alive and well at Mount Holyoke College. It is too bad that the ignorance about this is alive and well.”
