Harper, Frances E.W. (1825–1911)

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Harper, Frances E.W. (1825–1911)

American educator, writer, lecturer, abolitionist, and human-rights activist. Name variations: Frances Watkins Harper. Born Frances Ellen Watkins on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore, Maryland; died on February 11, 1911, and buried in Eden Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; married Fenton Harper, on November 22, 1860 (died, May 1864); children: Mary Harper and three stepchildren.

After her mother died (1828), was raised and educated by uncle, Reverend William Watkins; was first woman instructor at Union Seminary (later Wilber-force) in Ohio (1851); taught in York, Pennsylvania (1852); was hired as lecturer for Maine Anti-Slavery Society (1854); was lecturer and agent for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, one of the signers of the constitution of the Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society (1858); married Fenton Harper, a widower with three children in Cincinnati, Ohio (1860); spoke at the 11th Annual Woman's Rights convention in New York (1866).

Selected works:

Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854); Moses: A Story of the Nile; Sketches of Southern Life (1872); Iola Le Roy, or the Shadows Uplifted (1892).

From the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society to the Pennsylvania Peace Society, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper aligned herself with those who shared her concerns about slavery, education, temperance, women's rights, and morality, issues often reflected in her literary work. Until Paul Laurence Dunbar, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was the most popular 19th-century African-American poet. She enjoyed international fame as a lecturer with brilliant oratory skills.

In September 1992, an inter-denominational coalition of Philadelphia churches held a celebration of cultural and religious events to mark her life and achievements. "Philadelphians redis-cover Frances Ellen Watkins Harper" reads the headline of The Weekly Press, a neighborhood paper. During the four-day commemoration, three Unitarian Universalist churches and Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church held the first-ever Continental Congress of African-American Unitarian-Universalists, and the Harper event was the centerpiece. This resurgence of interest in the works of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper has resulted in a reconsideration of both her literary career and her role as an activist.

Born Frances Ellen Watkins to a free African-American mother, Harper was orphaned in 1828 when her mother died. An aunt cared for her until she was old enough for school. Her uncle, the Reverend William Watkins, took her into his household, giving her an immediate family of siblings and the benefit of an educational institution, The William Watkins' Academy for Negro Youth, that he founded and administered. Entering both the Watkins' household and William Watkins Academy at age six, Harper was introduced to the key principles of self-discipline and personal responsibility. Free blacks lived an uneasy existence at best; if they were to survive and help African-Americans who had managed to escape slavery, it was necessary that they be imbued with extraordinary courage and focus. Reverend William Watkins possessed such courage, and, because of the kinship they shared, Harper would have an opportunity to observe a "Race Man"—one who cares deeply for his people and their welfare—in action.

Her path for a while was marked with struggle and trial, but… she met them bravely, and her life became not a thing of ease and indulgence, but of conquest, victory, and accomplishments.
—Frances E.W. Harper, "The Two Offers" (1859)

William Watkins, born free, was a self-made man. By avocation, he was a preacher and community leader, using his role as a preacher and self-taught medical expert to administer to the community. As headmaster of Watkins Academy, he influenced the education of African-Americans, enslaved and free. Interested in uplifting his people, he sought to discipline himself and those who occupied his sphere of influence. Watkins was a shoemaker by vocation who employed the skill he acquired as an apprentice to support himself and his family even as he ran Watkins Academy and founded a literary society in his church. In preparation for his role as headmaster of his own school, Watkins taught himself the basics of a classical education. Watkins Academy's curricula reflected his pragmatism and was grounded in Biblical studies overlaid with the classics. The school gained such an outstanding reputation that slave owners enrolled their "favorite slaves" there. In this environment, Harper had a chance to observe slavery, and resistance to it, through the presence of her uncle whose opposition to slavery or colonization was as strong as his loyalty to The Liberator, an anti-slavery publication.

During the years she attended her uncle's school, Harper studied oratory, grammar, composition, natural philosophy, music, mathematics, and—consistent with the founder's pragmatic philosophy—she also studied sewing and embroidery. Because free blacks in slave states were required to learn a trade, Harper was apprenticed out at 13 as a domestic to the Armstrong family where she was supposed to hone her "domestic science" skills. Because she had taught sewing at Watkins Academy, Harper required less training in the domestic sciences. This left her more time to pursue her studies in other areas. In The Underground Rail Road, William Still notes that the Armstrongs allowed the inquisitive teenager "occasional half-hours of leisure to satisfy her greed for books."

Before reaching the age of 21, Harper had written a volume of poetry and prose published under the title, Forest Leaves. At 26, having served her 10-year apprenticeship, Harper decided she wanted to live in a free state and moved to Ohio. She took a position at Union Seminary, a school for free blacks that would later become known as Wilberforce. In obtaining this position, Harper marked another milestone in her life as she was the first woman to obtain such a position. However, there was no need for her literary skills; she was hired to teach "domestic science." Remaining in Ohio for just one year, Harper traveled to York, Pennsylvania, where she began to grapple with the career dilemma she faced. She pondered how best to reconcile her literary aspirations with her desire to uplift her people. She doubted her ability to do this as a teacher, and her experience in York convinced her that she could only do a half-hearted job in the classroom.

Harper was attracted to the anti-slavery societies and their activism for the African American cause. Two important things happened to her while she was still in residence as a teacher at York. She met William Still who conducted the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia. Chair of the Acting Vigilance Committee, Still developed a network of safe hiding places for fugitives in the city's black community, raised funds for the refugees, and monitored the activities of the slave catchers. The Underground Rail Road is an important historical source because of the careful notes Still kept about the "passengers on the underground rail road." As their friendship developed, Still was convinced that Harper's desire to reach young children indirectly through adults could best be done in the forum she most desired. Buoyed by the possibility of a new career, Harper began shaping an essay in which she explored the ideas concerning education as a tool for elevating her race. Once she had decided to leave York, William Still and his wife Letitia George invited her to share their quarters over the anti-slavery office at 31 North Fifth Street. She arrived with a small volume of Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) that she hoped to publish.

Harper was also interested in becoming an agent for the Underground Railroad. Aware of the possibility of using literature to address social issues, she visited the anti-slavery office, read documents, and heard the stories of suffering from the escapees who traveled through the Underground Railroad. During this period, she began the fusion of her personal and political beliefs that informs her work and places her in the tradition of African-American women who maintain this fusion is necessary. Her growing interest in the anti-slavery cause was evident in the small volume she hoped to publish. Some of the poems she submitted separately to various anti-slavery publications such as Frederick Douglass' Paper and the Liberator. Harper's interest in the anti-slavery movement and her recognition of the usefulness of anti-slavery material is most evident in the poems influenced by Harriet Beecher Stowe 's Uncle Tom's Cabin. In a poem "To Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe," Harper reveals her recognition of the "power of the pen" as she thanks Stowe for her "grac'd… pen of fire."

Thus, Harper began to develop into a "Race Woman." Her concern for her people would eclipse her uncle's, as she eventually came to see a relationship between her literary aspirations and her attitude toward injustice, shaped by the racism she experienced firsthand. "Now let me tell you about Pennsylvania," she recalled: "I have been in every New England state, New York, Canada, and Ohio, but of all these places, this is the meanest of all as far as the treatment of colored people is concerned."

When Harper's convictions wavered, instance after instance of racism propelled her toward a reconciliation of politics and art. While she was still agonizing over where she would be most effective, Maryland passed a law forbidding free blacks who lived in the North to enter the state. Those who did so would be sold South into slavery. The account of one unfortunate free black who did not heed this law and was sold into slavery and sent to Georgia had a galvanizing effect upon Harper. As the ship carried him south toward enslavement, the man sought to hide in the wheel-house of the boat and was discovered. Having been exposed to the elements, and in weakened physical condition, this man died in slavery. "Upon that grave," Harper wrote to Still, "I pledge myself to the Anti-Slavery cause."

Recognizing that slavery had effectively robbed many African-Americans of their humanity, Harper sought a way of uplifting her people while educating them, a way of speaking out against slavery in a large forum. Though she did not receive the job as agent for the Underground Railroad, she had gathered significant

data and stiffened her resolve as to what role she should play in the anti-slavery movement. She traveled from Philadelphia to Boston to New Bedford; in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that "hot-bed of the fugitives," Harper found an audience eager to receive the ideas she had been mulling over since leaving York, Pennsylvania. Lecturing on "The Elevation and Education of our People," Harper was so compelling that she was hired by the Maine Anti-Slavery Society as a lecturer. For nearly two years, she traveled in New England states and Canada.

When she arrived in Philadelphia to take over her new role as a lecturer for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in October 1857, Harper was convinced of her calling, and her oratory powers were acclaimed by her listeners. She was rated among the top two female orators during a period when oratory was an important communication skill. By the time her assignment with the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society ended on May 1858, she had gained enough public recognition to begin speaking on her own. She was such a powerful public figure that she was enlisted to help frame the constitution for the new Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society even though African-American males, such as Frederick Douglass, William Nell, were not receptive to her and other African-American women.

As she gained a reputation and grew more successful, Harper continued to support William Still and the anti-slavery movement in any way she could. Writing to Still after a rescue attempt by the Anti-Slavery Society had failed, Harper reveals the depth of her commitment to the anti-slavery cause: "If there is anything that I can do for them in money or words, call upon me." Her commitment to the cause was total: "This is a common cause; and if there is any burden to be borne in the Anti-Slavery cause—anything to be done to weaken our hateful chains… I have a right to do my share of the work." Keeping her word, she lent her very public support to militant abolitionist John Brown and his family. When John Brown was captured at Harper's Ferry in October 1859 and sentenced to death, Harper wrote to Brown, "Although the hands of Slavery throw a barrier between you and me.… Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread send you my sympathy." She followed up this public show of support with financial contributions and her physical presence. During the two weeks before John Brown's execution, Harper remained with his wife Mary Anne Brown .

On November 22, 1860, Frances Ellen Watkins married Fenton Harper, a free black, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Using her savings, she purchased the family home, a farm in Grove City, Ohio. Harper devoted herself to being a housewife and later, when her daughter Mary Harper was born, a mother. Lecturing infrequently, she made and sold butter to help supplement the family's income. Her husband died in May 1864. The farm Harper had purchased with her own money, and all of her possessions were seized to pay off Fenton Harper's outstanding debts. To support herself and her child, Harper returned to giving lectures. This traumatic event would induce her to find common cause with women's rights groups despite racial tensions within some women's organizations.

Harper's role in the world took on another dimension with her commitment to the women's rights movement. In assuming this role she is numbered among Sojourner Truth, Mary Shadd Cary, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Josephine Ruffin , and Mary Church Terrell . She was among the speakers at the 11th annual Woman's Rights Convention, held in New York in May 1866. Then 41 years old, she told her audience that before her husband's death, the concerns of race had superseded the concerns of gender:

Born of a race whose inheritance has been outrage and wrong, most of my life has been spent battling these wrongs. But I did not feel as keenly as others that I had these rights in common with other women, which are now demanded. Had I died instead of my husband, how different might have been the result. By this time he would have another wife, it is likely; no administrator would have gone into his house, broken up his home, sold his bed, and taken away his means of support… justice is not fulfilled so long as woman is un-equal before the law. We are all bound together in one great bundle of humanity.

Harper was not naive about her condition and the tenuousness of her alliance. She refused to engage in utopian notions: "I do not believe that giving the woman the ballot is immediately going to cure all the ills of life." Even when she was attempting to form new alliances, Harper was direct and to the point:

I do not believe that white women are dewdrops just exhaled from the skies. I think that like men they may be divided into three classes, the good, the bad, and the indifferent. The good would vote according to their convictions and principles; the bad, as dictated by prejudice or malice; and the indifferent will vote on the strongest side of the question, with the winning party.

The day after the Woman's Rights Convention, the American Equal Rights Association was formed to fight for equal rights for both black men and women. Harper found common ground with this organization alongside of other African-American abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, Charles Remond, and Sojourner Truth. She joined with Douglass in arguing that African-American men in the South needed political power. Like Harriet Jacobs, Maria W. Stewart , and others, Harper devoted herself to the work of Reconstruction in the South. She felt that this could be achieved through enfranchisement, education, and morality. During this same period, she argued for both self-advancement and self-help and worked with the Women's Christian Temperance Union, even after serving as superintendent of the Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania "colored" chapters for nearly seven years. Though she gave freely of herself to reformist organizations, Harper supported herself by writing and lecturing. In 1892, she published Iola Le Roy, or the Shadows Uplifted. Until her death in Philadelphia in 1911, she remained actively involved in her community. Frances Harper is buried in Eden Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

sources:

Ammons, Elizabeth. "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper," in Legacy 2, 1985, pp. 61–66.

Bacon, Margaret Hope. "One Great Bundle of Humanity: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)," in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Vol. CXIII, no. 1.

Foster, Frances Smith, ed. A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader. NY: The Feminist Press, 1990.

Graham, Maryemma, ed. The Compete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper. NY: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Van Dongen, Susan. "Philadelphians Rediscover Frances Ellen Watkins Harper," in The Weekly Press. Vol. 6, no. 8. March 5, 1993, pp. 1, 18.