Elizabeth Murphy Moss


Elizabeth B. Murphy Moss was an American journalist, the first black woman to be certified as an overseas war correspondent in World War II.

Life

Elizabeth Murphy came from a Baltimore newspaper family: her grandfather John H. Murphy, Sr. had founded the Baltimore Afro-American, and her father Carl J. Murphy edited the newspaper from 1922 until his death in 1967. Her mother Vashti Turley Murphy was a co-founder of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
The eldest of five daughters, Elizabeth studied at Frederick Douglass High School and the University of Minnesota, where she gained a bachelor's degree in journalism. She spent most of her life working for the Afro-American. By 1942 she was the city editor for the newspaper's Baltimore section. Married to Afro photographer Frank Phillips, she became the first black woman to be accredited as a war correspondent in 1944. Though she travelled to London, intending to travel further into Europe, she was unfortunately taken ill and forced to return home. In 1949 she began a column 'If You Ask Me' which continued in the newspaper for the next 48 years.
She died 7 April 1998 at the Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore.