Last week’s political news — roiling with coverage of midterms and recounts, the departure of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the mortal drama of California wildfires — was punctuated by the president’s derision of one, two and then three black women journalists from the nation’s most prominent platform, the White House.

For a president who has repeatedly branded the press the “enemy of the American people,” dust-ups with members of the media are nothing new. But when President Trump sparred three times in three days with Yamiche Alcindor of the PBS NewsHour, Abby Phillip of CNN and April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Network — denigrating the reporters and their questions in terms that included “loser,” “stupid” and “racist” — observers were quick to suggest the president showed a special animus toward African American women.

In pushing back against Trump’s attacks, the three women joined a long line of black women journalists, who have occupied an especially uneasy place in our political culture for almost two centuries. From their earliest 19th-century forays into news coverage and commentary, the derision they have faced has given African American women many reasons to retreat from the public sphere. But they have not. Instead they have wielded their words in a way that enriches public debates and strengthens democracy. Alcindor, Phillip and Ryan embody the best of that tradition. Like their predecessors, they have never retreated, and there is no reason to think they will do so now.

When in 1854 Mary Ann Shadd Cary debuted her news weekly, The Provincial Freeman, she was the first black woman to publish a newspaper. That was not an easy milestone to achieve: She had to battle to get her ideas into print. For a start, she migrated to Canada West (today’s Ontario) to avoid U.S. laws that suppressed independent black activism. From there, she built a team and raised funds.

Even then, she could not hope to succeed if the endeavor went forward under her own name. Instead, the names of Shadd Cary’s collaborators, Samuel R. Ward and Alexander McArthur, crowned the masthead. In this period, readers would likely have doubted the legitimacy of a paper that was admittedly led by a black woman. The Provincial Freeman enjoyed a 15-year run, and Shadd Cary’s astute analysis and withering commentary — frequently signed with the gender-neutral byline “M.A. Shadd” — left their mark in a political moment during which slavery and civil rights were center on the national agenda. ...