Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Frances Ellen Watkins was born free on September 24, 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland (then a slave state), the only child of free parents. Her parents, whose names are unknown, both died in 1828, making Watkins an orphan at the age of three. 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. At 13, Watkins became employed as a seamstress and nursemaid for a white family that owned a bookshop. The following year Watkins took a position at a school in York, Pennsylvania. ==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. (97 years before Rosa Parks). 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 people while enslaved in Egypt. Anglo-African Magazine and the weekly Anglo-African newspaper were both Civil War-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 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. Harper uses the figure of a former slave, called Aunt Chloe, as a narrator in several of these sketches. 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, 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. ==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 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 Jezebel 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 and woman's suffrage, progressive causes that were connected before and after the American Civil War. In 1853, Watkins joined the American Anti-Slavery Society 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." She continued to travel, lecturing throughout the East, the Midwest, and Canada from 1856 to 1860. 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 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 law, defense of Black rights, or abolition of the convict lease 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. In the 1860s and beyond, Harper delivered various speeches pertaining to women's issues and more specifically, Black women's issues. In her speech, she stated:After Harper delivered this speech, the National Woman's Rights Convention agreed to form the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), which incorporated African American suffrage into the Women's Suffrage Movement. AERA was short-lived, ending when Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which would grant African American men the right to vote. Harper did, however, support the proposed Sixteenth Amendment, which would have granted women the right to vote. In 1897, Harper became the NACW's vice president and used her platform to advocate for Black women's civil rights. Indeed, during her years of activism, Harper expressed concern regarding how individuals would cast their ballots once granted the right to vote. Indeed, Harper does not appear in the History of Woman Suffrage anthology written by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were original members of the NWSA. As scholar 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 ==

, Philadelphia, built ca. 1870. Harper lived here through her old age until her death in 1911. In 1860, Frances Watkins married a widower named Fenton Harper. When Fenton Harper died four years later, Frances Harper kept custody of Mary and moved to the East Coast. 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: • ''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 at Morgan State University 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 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'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. --> == References ==