Basic Information
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore, Maryland September 24, 1825 and passed away February 22, 1911. Harper was known as the “Mother of African American journalism” (Atlas, 2019). She was an educator, writer, mother, abolitionist, and advocate for social reform. She is greatly recognized for her numerous poems published starting at just the young age of 20 (Powell, 2013). Later in life, she had a short story and a novel published, being the very first Black woman to do both. Harper dedicated her life in support of many Black organizations, the 15th amendment, the Underground Railroad, and the American Woman Suffrage Association.
Background Information
Frances E.W. Harper was orphaned by the age of 3 years old due to the loss of her mother and her father, whose names are unknown. It’s also worth mentioning that her parents were born free during a time that slavery was still occurring in Maryland. Her mother’s sister, Aunt Harrietta and her husband William, took Frances in and raised her (WOSU, 2019). Her uncle ran an all Blacks school where she was able to attend, learning the basic necessities to read, write, and sew (Powell, 2013). By the age of 13 she worked in a white family’s home as a domestic, where she was able to gain access to their library reading a variety of books. Her young academic years built the foundation she needed to learn about civil rights and develop the passion she had for activism in her own creative way. Through her writing, Harper excelled specifically with the form of poetry. Being a free African-American woman she endured the middle to lower class, for her education allowed her greater opportunities than most due to her writing and speaking skills. She eventually moved to Ohio where she joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and became the Union Seminary’s very first woman educator (Powell, 2013). Frances is recognized for being able to take those ‘first steps’ for many African-American women, and in 1845, Autumn Leaves, was just the first of many collections she had published. She had a total of ten published books throughout her life, representing the recordings of her own and others’ life experiences. In 1860 she married Fenton Harper, bearing only a daughter together before he too passed in 1864. This left her to pick back up her activists workings and dedicate her remaining time to it (Parker, 2012, p. 147).
Contributions to the First Wave
Frances E.W. Harper was a fearless woman of color during a dangerous time where she demanded change for the better. Her human rights activist character led her to tour the states making public speeches and record her experiences that would then be highly popular in Black journals (Nat. Park Service, 2018). After the Civil War, Harper took initiative in advocating for women’s rights along side white women believing that the attention to be gained would be greater than if she were to approach it separately as a black woman (Parker, 2012, p. 147). One of her first motions to bring awareness of the inequalities women faced, was to publish, Two Offers, which was the first short story to be published by an African American woman (Atlas, 2019). This highlighted the issues for women when it came to the legal statute and economic dependencies imposed to suppress women. In May of 1866, Frances gave a remarkable lecture at the Woman’s Rights Convention. She provided a strong reflection piece for white women to take a look at how they too might be oppressive to people of color. She is quoted in Parker’s article, “Society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You tried that in the case of the negro. You pressed him down for two centuries; and in so doing you crippled the moral strength and paralyzed the spiritual energies of the white men of the country” (2012, p. 149).
The fight to get white women on the voting ballot Harper believed wasn’t going to serve all, except those of similar status and race. This drew the division for her when it came to not uniting with well-known white suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was not in favor of the fifteenth amendment because they believed white women held superior vote to that of the African American man at the time (Parker, 2012, p.149). This led Harper to the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) where Frederick Douglass, another well known civil rights activist, also collaborated with the organization (Nat. Park Service, 2018).
Another cause she spoke on was the temperance movement for she believed alcohol took part in blaming for the destruction of families and their homes. This work was conducted under the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (Parker, 2012, p. 152). Although a great deal of her life’s work was dedicated to bettering the lives of African Americans, when it comes to her feminism work she took a holistic approach. She was forever bringing awareness to the forefront for white women when working with them, that it’s not just the white women’s equality we should be in pursuit of but also that of their sister, the black woman too. For her, Christian affiliation guided her, encompassing all people are God’s children, no exclusions addressed by the one divine truth. Still during the time of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, she became a co-leader of the National Association of Women of Color.
The book Poems of the Miscellaneous was historically impactful for the cause as well. She was able to capture the mental hardships and point of views of various slaves. Exposing and documenting poems describing everyday struggles and stories for her people, whereas often times these ‘everyday behavior’ stories were overlooked.
“Born into inheritance of misery, nurtured in degradation, and cradled in oppression, with the scorn of the white man upon their flesh, what can be expected from their offspring, but a mournful reaction of the cursed system which spreads its baneful influence over the body and soul; which dwarfs the intellect, stunts its development, debases the spirit, and degrades the soul?”
– Frances Watkins Harper (1857)
Analysis and Conclusion
Francis Watkins Harper had gender, class, and race against her, yet she prevailed serving a life dedicated to fighting for rights of equality for all. Her strengths were in her writings, her poetry spoke loudly and could be eye-opening, even today recognizing that she was greatly ahead of her time. She wrote about the double standard between men and women, describing it as, “What was the difference between a woman that had fallen, and a man that had caused the fall?” (WOSU, 2019). Her barriers consisted of her race, being a widow, a single mother, and a woman. All these obstacles she spent her life trying to change and with the use of Christian beliefs she was able to leverage common religious worldviews to help her causes. Harper’s poetry remains her legacy and even before her death she wrote Bury Me in a Free Land, speaks loudly to remind us that this nation shares a vast amount of different perspectives dealing with oppression, captivity, exploitation and tyranny (Powell, 2013). Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was laid to rest in the Eden Cemetery, near Philadelphia, where other African American’s lay to rest in a space that allowed their cultural practices to be condoned and celebrated.
“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.”
-Frances E. W. Watkins (Powell, 2013)
References
Atlas, N. (2019). Inspiring Speeches by Frances Watkins Harper, 19th-Century Reformer & Author. Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life. https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/author-quotes/inspiring-speeches-by-frances-watkins-harper/
1898. Frances E.W. Harper, three-quarter length portrait, standing, facing front, 1898. [Photograph] Library of Congress. Retrieved from: https://www.loc.gov/item/97513270/
Harper, F. E. W. (1857). Poems on Miscellaneous. Philadelphia, Merrihew & Thompson, printers. Retrieved from: https://archive.org/details/poemsonmiscellan00harp/page/52
Parker, A. (2012). Frances Watkins Harper and the Search for Women’s Interracial Alliances. [online] Digitalcommons.brockport.edu. Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=hst_facpub
Powell, D.A. (2013, January 15). D. A. Powell reads Frances E. W. Harper’s “Bury Me in a Free Land” Poetry of America: A Collection of Field Recordings by Award-winning Contemporary Poets. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetry-of-america/american-identity/dapowell-francesharper.html.
U.S. National Park Service. (2018, August 29). Frances Ellen Watkins Harper House. Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/places/frances-ellen-watkins-harper-house.htm.
WOSU Public Media. (2019, May 3). Columbus Neighborhoods: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper – Notable Women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fmN7RHhEPk