Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an American
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...
,
suffragist
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vo ...
,
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...
,
temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer. Beginning in 1845, she was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.
Born free in
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...
, Harper had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at the age of
20. At 67, she published her widely novel ''
Iola Leroy
''Iola Leroy'', ''or Shadows Uplifted'', an 1892 novel by Frances E. W. Harper, is one of the first novels published by an African-American woman. While following what has been termed the "sentimental" conventions of late nineteenth-century wr ...
'' (1892), placing her among the first Black women to publish a novel.
As a young woman in 1850, Harper taught
domestic science
Home economics, also called domestic science or family and consumer sciences (often shortened to FCS or FACS), is a subject concerning human development, personal and family finances, consumer issues, housing and interior design, nutrition and f ...
at Union Seminary in
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...
, a school affiliated with the
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a Methodist denomination based in the United States. It adheres to Wesleyan theology, Wesleyan–Arminian theology and has a connexionalism, connexional polity. It ...
(AME).
In 1851, while living with the family of
William Still
William Still (October 7, 1819 – July 14, 1902) was an African-American abolitionist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and was responsible for aiding and assisting at least 649 slaves to freedom ...
, a clerk at the
Pennsylvania Abolition Society
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first American abolition society. It was founded April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and held four meetings. Seventeen of the 24 men who attended initia ...
who helped
refugee slaves make their way along the
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an organized network of secret routes and safe houses used by freedom seekers to escape to the abolitionist Northern United States and Eastern Canada. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery ...
, Harper started to write anti-slavery literature.
After joining the
American Anti-Slavery Society
The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was an Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist society in the United States. AASS formed in 1833 in response to the nullification crisis and the failures of existing anti-slavery organizations, ...
in 1853, Harper began her career as a public speaker and political activist.
Harper also had a successful literary career. Her collection ''
Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects'' (1854) was a commercial success, making her the most popular African American poet before
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American C ...
.
Her short story "Two Offers" was published in the ''Anglo-African'' in 1859, making literary history as the first short story published by a Black woman.
Harper founded, supported, and held high office in several national progressive organizations. In 1886, she became superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania
Women's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far ...
.
In 1896 she helped found the
National Association of Colored Women and served as its vice president.
Harper died at age 85 on February 22, 1911.
Early life and work
Frances Ellen Watkins was
born free
''Born Free'' is a 1966 British drama film starring the real-life couple Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as Joy and George Adamson, another real-life couple, who raised Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lion cub, to adulthood and released h ...
on September 24, 1825
in
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...
(then a
slave state
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave s ...
), the only child of free parents.
[ Busby, Margaret, "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper", in '']Daughters of Africa
''Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present'' is a compilation of orature and literature by more than 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora ...
'', 1992, p. 81. Her parents, whose names are unknown, both died in 1828, making Watkins an orphan at the age of three.
She was raised by her maternal aunt and uncle, Henrietta and Reverend
William J. Watkins, Sr., who gave her their last name.
Frances Watkins's uncle was the minister at the
Sharp Street African Methodist Episcopal Church. Watkins was educated at the
Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, which her uncle had established in 1820.
As a
civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...
activist and abolitionist, Reverend Watkins was a major influence on his niece's life and work.
At 13, Watkins became employed as a seamstress and nursemaid for a white family that owned a bookshop.
She stopped attending school but used her spare time to read from the books in the shop and work on her own writing.
In 1850, at age 26, Watkins moved from Baltimore to teach domestic science
Home economics, also called domestic science or family and consumer sciences (often shortened to FCS or FACS), is a subject concerning human development, personal and family finances, consumer issues, housing and interior design, nutrition and f ...
at Union Seminary, an AME-affiliated school for Black students near Columbus, Ohio
Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...
. She worked as the school's first female teacher. Union closed in 1863 when the AME Church diverted its funds to purchase Wilberforce University, the first Black-owned and operated college. The school in Wilberforce was run by the Reverend John Mifflin Brown, later a bishop in the AME Church. The following year Watkins took a position at a school in York, Pennsylvania
York is a city in York County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. Located in South Central Pennsylvania, the city's population was 44,800 at the time of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in ...
.
Writing career
Harper's writing career started in 1839 when she published pieces in antislavery journals. Her politics and writing informed each other. Her writing career started 20 years before she was married, so several of her works were published under her maiden name of Watkins.
Harper published her first volume of verse, ''Forest Leaves'', or ''Autumn Leaves,'' in 1845 when she was 20 years old. This book marked her as an important abolitionist voice. A single copy of this volume, long lost, was rediscovered in the early 21st century by scholar Johanna Ortner in Baltimore, at the Maryland Historical Society in the 2010s. Her second book, '' Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects'' (1854), was extremely popular. Over the next few years, it was reprinted several times.
In 1858, Harper refused to give up her seat or ride in the "colored" section of a segregated trolley car in Philadelphia (97 years before Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist. She is best known for her refusal to move from her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, in defiance of Jim Crow laws, which sparke ...
). In the same year, she published her poem " Bury Me in a Free Land" in '' The Anti-Slavery Bugle,'' which became one of her best known works.
In 1859, Harper's story "The Two Offers" was published in '' The Anglo-African Newspaper'', making her the first Black woman to publish a short story. That same year, ''Anglo-African Magazine'' published her essay "Our Greatest Want," in which Harper linked the common religious trope of oppression of African Americans to the oppression of the Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
people while enslaved in Egypt. ''Anglo-African Magazine'' and the weekly ''Anglo-African'' newspaper were both Civil War
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
-era periodicals that served as a forum for debate among abolitionists and scholars.
Harper published 80 poems. In her poem "The Slave Mother", she writes: "He is not hers, although she bore / For him a mother's pains; / He is not hers, although her blood / Is coursing through his veins! / He is not hers, for cruel hands / May rudely tear apart / The only wreath of household love / That binds her breaking heart." Throughout the two stanzas, Harper demonstrates the restricted relationship between an enslaved mother and her child, while including themes of family, motherhood, humanity and slavery. Another of her poems, "To the Cleveland Union Savers," published in '' The Anti-Slavery Bugle'' of Feb. 23, 1861, champions Sara Lucy Bagby, the last person in the United States to be returned to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Law.
Harper published
Sketches of Southern Life
' in 1872. This anthology detailed her experience touring the Southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, Dixieland, or simply the South) is List of regions of the United States, census regions defined by the United States Cens ...
and meeting newly freed Black people. In these poems she described the harsh living conditions faced by a Black woman during both slavery and the Reconstruction era
The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abol ...
. Harper uses the figure of a former slave, called Aunt Chloe, as a narrator in several of these sketches.[Hine, C.D., C.W. Hine, & S. Harrold (2011). ''The African American Odyssey.'' Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.]
From 1868 to 1888, Harper had three novels serialized in a Christian magazine: ''Minnie's Sacrifice'', ''Sowing and Reaping'', and ''Trial and Triumph.''
Harper is also known for what was long considered her first novel, ''Iola Leroy
''Iola Leroy'', ''or Shadows Uplifted'', an 1892 novel by Frances E. W. Harper, is one of the first novels published by an African-American woman. While following what has been termed the "sentimental" conventions of late nineteenth-century wr ...
, or Shadows Uplifted'', published as a book in 1892 when she was 67. This was one of the first books published by a Black woman in the United States. While using the conventions of the time, Harper dealt with serious social issues, including education for women, the social passing as white of mixed-race
The term multiracial people refers to people who are mixed with two or more
races and the term multi-ethnic people refers to people who are of more than one ethnicities. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mul ...
people, miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races or ethnicities. It has occurred many times throughout history, in many places. It has occasionally been controversial or illegal. Adjectives describin ...
, abolition, reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
, temperance, and social responsibility.
Harper was also a friend and mentor to many other African American writers and journalists, including Mary Shadd Cary, Ida B. Wells, Victoria Earle Matthews, and Kate D. Chapman.
Gendered stereotypes of black womanhood
When Harper began giving antislavery lectures, the first of which took place in 1854, her gender attracted attention. The challenges she faced were not limited to racial prejudices, for in those days black women who spoke publicly about racial issues were still few in number and scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that the Human, human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "race (human categorization), races", and that empirical evi ...
was deeply intertwined with scientific sexism. It was taken by some as confirmation of gendered stereotypes about the differences between black women and white women, as in the scientific thinking of the day black women were cast as a type, "governed almost entirely by her libido," drawing a stark contrast with the 19th century ideal of sexually pure white femininity.
Progressive causes
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a strong supporter of abolitionism, prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...
and woman's suffrage, progressive causes that were connected before and after the American Civil War. She was also active in the Unitarian Church, which supported abolitionism. Harper wrote to John Brown after he had been arrested and before his execution: "I thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race; I hope from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom."
In 1853, Watkins joined the American Anti-Slavery Society
The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was an Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist society in the United States. AASS formed in 1833 in response to the nullification crisis and the failures of existing anti-slavery organizations, ...
and became a traveling lecturer for the group. She delivered many speeches during this time and faced much prejudice and discrimination along the way. In 1854, Watkins delivered her first anti-slavery speech called "The Elevation and Education of Our People." The success of this speech resulted in a lecture tour in Maine
Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
for the Anti-Slavery Society. She recalled New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
warmly: "Dear old New England! It was there kindness encompassed my path; it was there kind voices made their music in my ear. The home of my childhood, the burial-place of my kindred, is not as dear to me as New England." She continued to travel, lecturing throughout the East, the Midwest, and Canada from 1856 to 1860. Of Pennsylvania's treatment of African American people, Harper stated: "Now let me tell you about Pennsylvania. I have been traveling nearly four years, and have been in every New England State, in New York, Canada, and Ohio; but of all these places, this is about the meanest of all."
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Harper moved South to teach newly freed Black people during the Reconstruction Era
The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abol ...
. During this time she also gave many large public speeches. In 1870, Harper worked with the Freedmen's Bureau
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen (i.e., former enslaved people) in the ...
encouraging many freedmen
A freedman or freedwoman is a person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their owners), emancipation (granted freedom as part of a larger group), or self- ...
in Mobile, Alabama
Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. After a successful vote to annex areas west of the city limits in July 2023, Mobil ...
, to "get land, everyone that can" so they could vote and act independently once Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment.
Harper was active in the growing number of Black organizations and came to believe that Black reformers had to be able to set their own priorities. From 1883 to 1890, she helped organize events and programs for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She had worked with members of the original WCTU, because "it was the most important women's organization to push for expanding federal power."[When Harper and her daughter settled in Philadelphia in 1870, she joined the First Unitarian Church.]
Corinne T. Field, "'Articulating Rights: Nineteenth-Century American Women on Race, Reform, and the State' (review)"
''The Journal of the Civil War Era'', Volume 2, Number 3, September 2012, pp. 465–467 , 10.1353/cwe.2012.0065, accessed 29 September 2014. In her role as superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania WCTU, Harper facilitated both access and independent organizing for Black women, promoting the collective action
Collective action refers to action taken together Advocacy group, by a group of people whose goal is to enhance their condition and achieve a common objective. It is a term that has formulations and theories in many areas of the social sciences ...
of all women as a matter of both justice and morality. "Activists like Harper and Frances Willard campaigned not only for racial and sexual equality but also for a new understanding of the federal government's responsibility to protect rights, regulate morality, and promote social welfare". Harper was disappointed, however, when Willard gave priority to white women's concerns, rather than supporting Black women's goals of gaining federal support for an anti-lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged or convicted transgressor or to intimidate others. It can also be an extreme form of i ...
law, defense of Black rights, or abolition of the convict lease
Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor in the United States, penal labor that was practiced historically in the Southern United States before it was formally Convict leasing#End of the system, abolished during the 20th century. Un ...
system.
Harper's public activism also continued in later years. In 1891, Harper delivered a speech to the National Council of Women of America in Washington D.C., demanding justice and equal protection by the law for the African American people. In her speech, she stated:
Suffrage activism
Activism techniques
Frances Harper's activism took an intersectional approach, which combined her campaign for African American civil rights with her advocacy for women's rights. One of Harper's major concerns regarded the brutal treatment Black women—including Harper herself—encountered on public transportation, and this matter foregrounded her advocacy for women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
. In the 1860s and beyond, Harper delivered various speeches pertaining to women's issues and more specifically, Black women's issues. One of her speeches, "We Are All Bound Up Together," delivered in 1866 at the National Woman's Rights Convention
The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Conventio ...
in New York City, demanded equal rights for all, emphasizing the need to raise awareness for African American suffrage while also advocating for women's suffrage. In her speech, she stated:After Harper delivered this speech, the National Woman's Rights Convention agreed to form the American Equal Rights Association
The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) was formed in 1866 in the United States. According to its constitution, its purpose was "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color o ...
(AERA), which incorporated African American suffrage into the Women's Suffrage Movement. Harper served as a member of AERA's Finance Committee, though Black women comprised only five of the organization's fifty-plus officers and speakers. AERA was short-lived, ending when Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which would grant African American men the right to vote. Some of AERA's suffragists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
, did not support the Amendment's aim to enfranchise Black men without extending suffrage rights to women. Harper, on the other hand, supported the Fifteenth Amendment, and endorsed the Amendment at AERA's final meeting. Shortly afterward, AERA divided into two separate movements: the National Woman Suffrage Association
The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement spl ...
(NWSA), which did not support the Amendment, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported the Amendment. Neither organization fully promoted the rights of Black women. As a proponent of the Fifteenth Amendment, Harper helped found the AWSA. After all, Harper did not want to undermine the progress of Black men by choosing to fight for women's suffrage over African American suffrage. Harper did, however, support the proposed Sixteenth Amendment, which would have granted women the right to vote. After the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Harper also encouraged formerly enslaved people to vote.
In addition to delivering speeches, Harper also promoted her intersectional suffrage advocacy in later years by helping found the National Association for Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. Harper was often the only Black woman at the progressive conferences she attended, which isolated her from the predominantly white reformers. Harper therefore helped organize the NACW to avoid the racism of white progressives. In 1897, Harper became the NACW's vice president and used her platform to advocate for Black women's civil rights.
Suffragism in literature
Various examples of Harper's writing contain themes of suffrage. Her poem, "The Deliverance," published in her 1872 anthology, ''Sketches of Southern Life'', discusses the vote through the lens of fictional Black female narratives during the Reconstruction era
The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abol ...
. As scholar Elizabeth A. Petrino argues, in "The Deliverance," Harper communicates how "women within the home are the catalysts for political rebellion" and likewise "posits women as moral exemplars and centers of political power within the home." Indeed, during her years of activism, Harper expressed concern regarding how individuals would cast their ballots once granted the right to vote. Harper's "The Deliverance" conveys these sentiments through several vignettes telling how different fictional men exercised their right to vote. Harper writes:
In these particular stanzas, the speaker questions how the voting population will exercise their right to vote. As the character John Thomas Reeder "sold his vote" for food, Aunt Kitty expresses her frustration that not all people—and particularly men, in this instance—fully understand the importance of the vote. Not only does Aunt Kitty, the sole female figure in the text, "toss" the meat and flour, but she also scolds Reeder and makes him cry. While Aunt Kitty has agency in her encounter with Reeder, Reeder has a power of his own in possessing the right to vote. Within "The Deliverance," Harper expresses a desire for Black women to obtain suffrage rights alongside their male counterparts.
In addition to "The Deliverance," Harper's poem
"The Fifteenth Amendment,"
describes in positive terms the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African-American men the right to vote:In these stanzas, Harper includes exclamation points, alongside imagery such as "chimes" of the bells, and a command for the African American people to "shake off the dust." Harper additionally incorporates positive diction, such as the phrases "gladness thrill" and "joyful triumph." Harper also uses regal language to describe the newly enfranchised population. Upon receiving voting rights, Black men are "crowned" and become "amid the noblest of the land," posing a contrast with their "once despised name" that Harper references. In general, the language in "The Fifteenth Amendment" casts the Fifteenth Amendment in a positive light, which aligns with Harper's previous support for the Amendment that led her to help found the American Woman Suffrage Association. Unlike "The Deliverance," however, Harper's "The Fifteenth Amendment" poem does not express a particular yearning for Black women's suffrage.
Alongside her poetry, Harper's prose also presents suffrage activism. Her novel
Minnie's Sacrifice
', published in 1869—in the same year as the Fifteenth Amendment debates—describes the vote as a defense mechanism for Black women as victims of racial violence in the Reconstruction South.''Minnie's Sacrifice'' also highlights the intersectional struggles faced by Black women. For example, schola
argues in her analysis of the novel that the need for protection of the law, which the vote could help Black women obtain, is "rooted in both radicalized and gendered injustices that cannot be extricated from one another." Near the end of the novel, Minnie expresses a desire for Black women's suffrage, contending the right of suffrage should not be based upon "service or sex, but on the common base of humanity." Responding to the male character Louis, who believes the nation is "not prepared for" Black women's suffrage, Minnie states:Through Minnie's statement, Harper conveys a desire for Black women to achieve suffrage rights in order to defend themselves from oppression. Shortly after making this claim, Minnie is killed—the result of racial violence. Minnie is not protected by the law, and she is a victim of the oppression she protests against in her pro-suffrage rhetoric. In this excerpt, Minnie also shows support for the Black man's vote, stating how she "would not throw a straw in the way of the colored man." At the same time, though, similar to the speaker in "The Deliverance," Minnie additionally expresses uncertainty regarding how these men might cast their ballots. Within ''Minnie's Sacrifice'', Harper communicates a determination for Black women to obtain the right to suffrage.
Scholarship of suffrage
There is little scholarship detailing Frances Harper's involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement. Indeed, Harper does not appear in the '' History of Woman Suffrage'' anthology written by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
, who were original members of the NWSA. As schola
Jennifer McDaneld
argues, the "suffrage split" that created NWSA and AWSA alienated Harper—who appeared to refuse white feminism—from the Women's Suffrage Movement.
Personal life
In 1860, Frances Watkins married a widower named Fenton Harper. The couple had a daughter together, named Mary Frances Harper, and three other children from Fenton Harper's previous marriage. When Fenton Harper died four years later, Frances Harper kept custody of Mary and moved to the East Coast. The two would continue to live there for the rest of their lives. While on the East Coast, Harper continued to give lectures to support herself.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper died of heart failure on February 22, 1911, at the age of 85. Her funeral service was held at First Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
. She was buried in Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania, next to her daughter, Mary.
Selected works
* ''Forest Leaves'', verse, 1845
* '' Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects'', 1854
* ''Free Labor'', 1857
* ''The Two Offers'', 1859
* ''Moses: A Story of the Nile'', 1869
* ''Sketches of Southern Life'', 1872
* ''Light Beyond the Darkness'', 1890
* ''The Martyr of Alabama and Other Poems'', 1894
''Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted''
novel, 1892
''Idylls of the Bible''
1901
* ''In Memoriam, Wm. McKinley'', 1901
In addition, the following three novels were originally published in serial form in the '' Christian Recorder'' between 1868 and 1888:[Frances Smith Foster, ed., ''Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances E.W. Harper,'' 1994]
*
Minnie's Sacrifice
'
*
Sowing and Reaping
'
*
Trial and Triumph
'
Legacy and honors
* Numerous African-American women's service clubs are named in her honor. Across the nation, in cities such as St. Louis, St. Paul, and Pittsburgh, F.E.W. Harper Leagues and Frances E. Harper Women's Christian Temperance Unions thrived well into the twentieth century.
* A historical marker was installed to commemorate her by her home at 1006 Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia. (See marker at left side of photo above.)
* A honors dormitory was named for her and Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, us ...
at Morgan State University
Morgan State University (Morgan State or MSU) is a Public university, public historically black colleges and universities, historically black research university in Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland. It is the largest of Maryland's historically bla ...
in Baltimore, Maryland; it is commonly referred to as Harper-Tubman, or simply Harper.
* An excerpt from her poem " Bury Me in a Free Land" is inscribed on a wall of the Contemplative Court, a space for reflection in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), colloquially known as the Blacksonian, is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in 2003 an ...
. The excerpt reads: "I ask no monument, proud and high to arrest the gaze of the passers-by; all that my yearning spirit craves is bury me not in a land of slaves."
* Her poem "Bury Me in a Free Land" was recited in Ava DuVernay
Ava Marie DuVernay (; born August 24, 1972) is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. She is a recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards, Primetime Emmy Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, NAACP Image Awards, a British Academy Film Awards, ...
's film ''August 28: A Day in the Life of a People'', which debuted at the 2016 opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
* In 2018 Harper was inducted to the National Abolition Hall of Fame in Peterboro, New York
Peterboro, located approximately southeast of Syracuse, New York, is a historic Hamlet (New York), hamlet and currently the administrative center for the Smithfield, New York, Town of Smithfield, Madison County, New York, Madison County, New Y ...
.
References
Further reading
* Boyd, Melba Joyce, ''Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E.W. Harper, 1825–1911''. Wayne State University Press, 1995.
* Carby, Hazel, "Introduction" to ''Iola Leroy''. Beacon Press, 1987.
* Cutter, Martha J., "The Politics of Hybridity in Frances Harper's Iola Leroy", ''Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing 1850 – 1930,'' University Press of Mississippi/Jackson, 1999, 141–160.
* Ernest, John. "Chapter 6: Unsolved Mysteries and Emerging Histories: Frances E. Harper's ''Iola Leroy''." In ''Resistance and Reformation in Nineteenth-century African-American Literature,'' University Press of Mississippi, 1995, 180–207.
* Field, Corinne T., "Frances E.W. Harper and the Politics of Intellectual Maturity", in Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage (eds), ''Toward An Intellectual History of Black Women'', The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, 2015, 110–126.
* Gardner, Eric. "Sowing and Reaping: A 'New' Chapter from Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Second Novel." ''Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life,'' vol. 13, no. 1, October 2012. http://commonplace.online/article/sowing-reapinga-new-chapter-frances-ellen-watkins-harpers-second-novel/.
* Graham, Maryemma, ed., ''The Complete Poems of Frances E.W. Harper'', 1988.
Jones, Martha S.
''Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All'', New York, NY: Basic Books, 2020, 90–93, 111–118.
* McKnight, Utz: ''Frances E.W Harper : a call to conscience'', Cambridge, UK; Medford, PA : Polity Press, 2021,
* Parker, Alison M. (2010). ''Articulating Rights: Nineteenth-Century American Women on Race, Reform, and the State,'' Northern Illinois University Press, 97–138.
* Parker, Alison M. (2012). '' Susan B. Anthony and the Struggle for Equal Rights,'' University of Rochester Press, 145–171.
* Shockley, Ann Allen, ''Afro-American Women Writers 1746–1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide'', New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books, 1989.
* Smith Foster, Frances, ed., '' A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader'', 1990.
* Zack, Ian. "Overlooked No More: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Poet and Suffragist" ''New York Times'' Feb 7, 2023
online obituary
External links
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* Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
Enlightened Motherhood: An Address/by Mrs. Frances E.W. Harper; before the Brooklyn Literary Society, November 15th, 1892
'' Published 1892.
* Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
Idylls of the Bible
'' Philadelphia, 1901.
* Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
Light Beyond the Darkness
'' Chicago: Donohue and Henneberry, 189–?
* Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects
'' Boston: J.B. Yerrinton & Son, Printers, 1854.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Poems at Poets.org
Wisconsin Curriculum guidelines
NEH's EDSITEment lesson Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's "Learning to Read"
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Harper, Frances
1825 births
1911 deaths
19th-century African-American women writers
19th-century African-American writers
19th-century American journalists
19th-century American novelists
19th-century American poets
19th-century American short story writers
19th-century American women journalists
19th-century American writers
20th-century African-American women writers
20th-century African-American writers
20th-century American women writers
African-American abolitionists
American abolitionists
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African-American poets
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Burials at Eden Cemetery (Collingdale, Pennsylvania)
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