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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an African-American abolitionist, suffragist, poet and author. She was also active in other types of social reform and was a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which advocated the federal government taking a role in progressive reform.[1]
Frances Ellen Watkins was born free in Baltimore, Maryland in about 1825. She was the only child of her mother,[2] Sidney Watkins.[3] One biographical account from Philadelphia's The Daily Evening Telegraph in 1867 said that Sidney had been born enslaved but her freedom had been purchased by her mother.[4] Frances was orphaned in the first few years of her life, and afterwards, was raised by her uncle, Rev. William Watkins in Baltimore. He ran a school for free Black children there, so Frances went to school there until she was about 13. At that point, she went to work,[2] earning a living by sewing and teaching. While employed by Mrs. Isaac Cruise, who had a large library, she was able to indulge her love of literature. Around this time, she began writing both poetry and prose. In the 1850's, she briefly taught in Ohio, then in Little York, Pennsylvania, then began travelling around the country giving lectures on abolition. She continued to write and had several works published.[4][2]
Frances married Fenton M Harper on 22 Nov 1860 in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio.[2][5] They had one daughter, Mary,[3][6] and lived on a small farm near Columbus, Ohio. During her marriage, Frances's writing and lecturing career slowed down.[4][2] Fenton died in 1864. After his death, Frances and Mary moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she lived for the rest of her life.[7] Frances continued writing and speaking. After slavery ended in the United States, her focus turned from abolition to temperance and other issues important to Black women.[8]
Frances died on February 22, 1911, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[9] Her funeral service was held at the Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.[10] She was buried in Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, next to her daughter, who had died two years before.[6]
Mrs. F.E.W. Harper |
Harper had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at the age of 20 and her widely praised novel Iola Leroy at the age of 67. In 1850, she became the first woman to teach sewing at the Union Seminary, an Ohio-based school for free African Americans. In 1851, alongside William Still, chairman of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, she helped escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad on their way to Canada. She began her career as a public speaker and political activist after joining the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1853.[12]
Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) became her biggest commercial success. Her short story Two Offers was published in the Anglo-African in 1859. She published Sketches of Southern Life in 1872. It detailed her experience touring the South and meeting newly freed Black people. In these poems she described the harsh living conditions of many. After the Civil War she continued to fight for the rights of women, African Americans, and many other social causes.[12]
Harper helped or held high office in several national progressive organizations. In 1883 she became superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women's Christian Temperance Union. In 1894 she helped found the National Association of Colored Women and served as its vice president.[12]
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.[13]
A women's honors dormitory named for her and Harriet Tubman at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, is commonly referred to as Harper-Tubman, or simply Harper.
An excerpt from her poem Bury Me in a Free Land is 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."[14]
Statue of Frances E. Watkins Harper. |
Her poem Bury Me in a Free Land was recited in the film August 28: A Day in the Life of a People, which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016.[15][14][16]
There is a memorial on the grounds of the Capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that consists of a pedestal inscribed with "one hundred names of change agents who pursued the power of suffrage and citizenship between 1870 and 1920." [17] Around the pedestal, there are statues of four great abolitionist orators. Frances Ellen (Watkins) Harper is one of these four.[18] See the 100 Voices Project.
See also:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LC39-QYT
Photo of statue, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission.
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Categories: Maryland, Free People of Color | Suffragists | Abolitionists | African-American Notables | Maryland Women's Hall of Fame | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Baltimore, Maryland | United States, Poets | Authors | Eden Cemetery, Collingdale, Pennsylvania | 100 Voices, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania | Woman's Christian Temperance Union | US Black Heritage Project Managed Profiles | Notables