Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a woman I wish I had learned about in grade school. One of the most important women of the 19th century, she was born a free black woman in Baltimore, Maryland, September 24, 1825.

February 22 is the anniversary of her death nearly a century ago, in 1911.

Harper was a revolutionary journalist, poet, author, abolitionist, feminist and lecturer, and was well known during her lifetime. A prolific writer, she has been credited with initiating the tradition of African-American protest poetry.

In 1859 her story, Two Offers, was the first short story to be published by an African-American. Because of her numerous magazine articles, she has been called the mother of African-American journalism.

She was a founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association, a member of the national board of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, executive officer of the Universal Peace Union, and one of the founding members of the National Association of Colored Women, serving as its vice president from 1895 to 1911.

Harper received a classical education at The Academy for Negro Youth, the school run by her uncle. Her studies included Latin, Greek, and the Bible. At the age of fourteen, she went to work as a domestic in a Quaker household, where she was encouraged to explore their library and was supported in her literary aspirations.

Her first volume of verse, Forest Leaves, (also called Autumn Leaves) was published in 1845 when she was 20 years old. Extremely popular, over the next few years the book went through twenty editions.

She attacked racism and the oppression of women in her poetry.

In 1854, her book, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, attracted critical notice and became her biggest success. She used her income from this and other books to help free slaves.

In her poem, Bury Me in a Free Land, she said:

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.

She married Fenton Harper in 1860, and their daughter Mary was born in 1862. Their marriage ended with his death in 1864.

After the Civil War ended, she turned her attention to women’s rights. Friends with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harper wrote and lectured on temperance, civil rights, suffrage, and literacy. A popular speaker, she passionately encouraged both black and white audiences to choose to live in integrity.

Songs for the People

by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Let me make the songs for the people, 
    

Songs for the old and young; 


Songs to stir like a battle-cry 
    

Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres, 
    

For carnage nor for strife; 


But songs to thrill the hearts of men 
    

With more abundant life. 


Let me make the songs for the weary, 
    

Amid life's fever and fret, 


Till hearts shall relax their tension, 
    

And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children, 
    

Before their footsteps stray, 


Sweet anthems of love and duty, 
    

To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged, 
    

When shadows dim their sight; 


Of the bright and restful mansions, 
    

Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so warn and weary, 
    

Needs music, pure and strong, 


To hush the jangle and discords 
    

Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow, 
    

Till war and crime shall cease; 


And the hearts of men grown tender 
    

Girdle the world with peace. 













Harper closes her book, Iola Leroy, with the following optimistic stanzas:

There is light beyond the darkness.

Joy beyond the present pain;

There is hope in God's great justice

And the Negro's rising brain.

Though the morning seems to linger

O'er the hill-tops far away,

Yet the shadows bear the promise

Of a brighter coming day.


Sources:

Baltimore Literary Heritage Project. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Accessed February 2009.

Foster, Frances Smith, ed. A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader, New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1990.

Grohsmeyer, Janeen. Frances Harper. Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. Accessed February 2009.

Reuben, Paul. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911), in Perspectives in American Literature: A Research and Reference Guide. Accessed February 2009.

Wikipedia. Frances Harper. Accessed February 2009.

www.opednews.com/articles/A-Brighter-Coming-Day-The-by-Meryl-Ann-Butler-090222-963.html

Author's Website: www.merylannbutler.com

Author's Bio: Meryl Ann Butler is an artist, author and educator who counts First Lady Dolley Payne Todd Madison as well as two signers of the Articles of Confederation among her ancestors. Mary Ball, mother of George Washington is in the ancestral lineage of Butler's great grandmother, Blanche Ball. Grateful to know that the blood of America's founding mothers and fathers runs in her veins, Butler has been newly filled with matriotism as a direct result of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Lest she appear too uppity, it should be revealed that she also has family ties to James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill. Butler has been actively engaged in utilizing the arts as stepping-stones toward joy-filled enlightenment for the past two decades. A native of NYC, her response to 9-11 was to pen an invitation to healing through creativity, entitled, "90-Minute Quilts: 15+ Projects You Can Stitch in an Afternoon" (Krause 2006). They don't call quilts "comforters" for nothing! www.90minutequilts.com Butler was faculty advisor for "The Love for All Mankind/Anti-Apartheid Quilt" project at ENMU (1993), now in the collection of the Hon. Nelson Mandela. As Arts Advisor for the Center for Improving U.S.- Soviet Relations (CIUSSR) Baltimore, MD; her activities included the "First U.S.-Soviet Childrens' Peace Quilt Exchange" (1987-88), an historic project chronicled in the media of both countries. Citizen diplomacy trips to the U.S.S.R. in 1987 and 1988 included lectures and presentations to fashion designers, craftspeople and artists in Odessa, Moscow, Kiev and St.Petersburg, in which she focused on the topic of creating global peace through international art exchanges. Butler is the proud mother of a daughter and seven stepchildren (all grown), and a passel o' grand younguns. It is to these new generations that she dedicates her political activism. Archived articles www.opednews.com/author/author1820.html Older archived articles, from before May 2005 are here.,