E. Claire Jerry

"Equality for All"

Clara Bewick Colby's newspaper, the Woman's Tribune, was one
of the leading papers of the early woman's rights movement. While
journalism historians and experts in suffrage history have recog-
nized its importance, it was also widely praised in its own day.
Friends of Bewick Colby lauded it: Olympia Brown called it a "fine
and interesting paper" that "filled an important place in the history
of the cause." ¹ Suffrage leaders welcomed it: May Wright Sewall
deemed it "the most ably edited paper devoted to our cause." ² Gen-
eral circulation newspapers acknowledged its value: the Tecumseh
( Nebraska) Republican pronounced the Tribune"one among the
ablest and neatest papers published in the state." ³ As this testimony
indicates, Clara Bewick Colby and the Woman's Tribune played sig-
nificant roles in the nineteenth-century movement for woman's
rights.

Although Bewick Colby was never elected to a national office in
the suffrage movement, her friends and enemies alike saw her as "a
free lance," an influential figure without organizational ties. ⁴ In
contrast to other affiliated or sponsored papers, the Tribune served
as her personal outlet and mechanism to influence the movement
and to achieve leadership status. The Woman's Tribune fulfilled
these functions in three interrelated contexts: within the move-
ment, between the paper and the readers, and in Bewick Colby's own
life. Because of its distinctive place among suffrage periodicals, a

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