Author Background

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911) was born free to free parents in the slave-holding state of Maryland. Her parents died when Harper was still young. Subsequently, she was brought up by her Uncle William J. Watkins, a minister, educator, and founder of a school for free blacks.

In 1850, she became the first female teacher at the Union Seminary in Ohio. She left teaching to devote herself to anti-slavery activism. She lectured for anti-slavery organizations in northern states and southeastern Canada. With William Still (1821–1902), she assisted fugitive slaves who escaped to freedom in the north through the network of people comprising the Underground Railroad.

Harper published poetry, first in anti-slavery newspapers, then in a collection entitled Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854). William Lloyd Garrison wrote its preface, endorsing her poetry, and the book sold so well that Harper published an enlarged and revised edition in 1857.

Writing Career

She wrote consistently about the black experience in slavery, black resistance to slavery, education, women’s rights, and the dangers of intemperance. Her poetry is marked by its emotional intensity, lyricism, and Biblical allusions and language. It made a strong appeal to readers. She also wrote short stories, essays, and four novels.

In The Anglo-African Magazine, she published “The Two Offers” (1859), a work that many consider to be the first short story published by an African American. In 1872, she published Sketches of Southern Life, in which she introduced the elderly Aunt Chloe, a free slave strong on reading and morality, particularly Christian morality.

Activism and Social Reform

In 1860, she married Fenton Harper. He died four years later, leaving Harper to care for his three children and their child Mary. Harper continued to publish highly successful books of poetry and worked as a paid lecturer, traveling not only in the North but also in the South. She worked with important social reformers for equal rights for blacks and for women, including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Susan B. Anthony. She joined white-majority organizations such as The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the American Woman Suffrage Association, and the National Council for Women, to give their causes her support while reminding these groups to support blacks.

Her last novel, Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), tells of a mixed race woman who reunites her family after the Civil War, refuses to pass for white, and remains true to herself and her own goals even within marriage. It speaks of a mutually-supportive black community that communicates amongst itself in messages of which and to which whites remain unaware. With Harriet Tubman, Mary Church Terrell, and Ida B. Wells, Harper helped found the National Association for Colored Women in 1896.

The Slave Mother (1854)

A TALE OF THE OHIO.

I have but four, the treasures of my soul,

They lay like doves around my heart;

I tremble lest some cruel hand

Should tear my household wreaths apart.

My baby girl, with childish glance,

Looks curious in my anxious eye,

She little knows that for her sake

Deep shadows round my spirit lie.

My playful boys could I forget.

My home might seem a joyous spot,

But with their sunshine mirth I blend

The darkness of their future lot.

And thou my babe, my darling one,

My last, my loved, my precious child,

Oh! when I think upon thy doom

My heart grows faint and then throbs wild.

The Ohio’s bridged and spanned with ice.

The northern star is shining bright,

I’ll take the nestlings of my heart

And search for freedom by its light.

Winter and night were on the earth,

And feebly moaned the shivering trees,

A sigh of winter seemed to run

Through every murmur of the breeze.

She fled, and with her children all,

She reached the stream and crossed it o’er,

Bright visions of deliverance came

Like dreams of plenty to the poor.

Dreams! vain dreams, heroic mother,

Give all thy hopes and struggles o’er,

The pursuer is on thy track,

And the hunter at thy door.

Judea’s refuge cities had power

To shelter, shield and save,

E’en Rome had altars; ‘neath whose shade

Might crouch the wan and weary slave.

But Ohio had no sacred fane,

To human rights so consecrate,

Where thou may’st shield thy hapless ones

From their darkly gathering fate.

Then, said the mournful mother,

If Ohio cannot save,

I will do a deed for freedom.

She shall find each child a grave.

I will save my precious children

From their darkly threatened doom,

I will hew their path to freedom

Through the portals of the tomb.

A moment in the sunlight,

She held a glimmering knife,

The next moment she had bathed it

In the crimson fount of life.

They snatched away the fatal knife,

Her boys shrieked wild with dread;

The baby girl was pale and cold.

They raised it up, the child was dead.

Sends this deed of fearful daring

Through my country’s heart no thrill,

Do the icy hands of slavery

Every pure emotion chill?

Oh! if there is any honor.

Truth or justice in the land.

Will ye not, as men and Christians,

On the side of freedom stand?

Ethiopia (1854)

Yes! Ethiopia yet shall stretch

Her bleeding hands abroad;

Her cry of agony shall reach

The burning throne of God,

The tyrant’s yoke from off her neck,

His fetters from her soul,

The mighty hand of God shall break,

And spurn the base control.

Redeemed from dust and freed from chains,

Her sons snail lift their eyes;

From cloud-capt hills and verdant plains

Shall shouts of triumph rise.

Upon her dark, despairing brow,

Shall play a smile of peace;

For God shall bend unto her wo,

And bid her sorrows cease.

‘Neath sheltering vines and stately palms

Shall laughing children play,

And aged sires with joyous psalms

Shall gladden every day.

Secure by night, and blest by day.

Shall pass her happy hours;

Nor human tigers hunt for prey

Within her peaceful bowers.

Then, Ethiopia! stretch, oh! stretch

Thy bleeding hands abroad;

Thy cry of agony shall reach

And find redress from God.

Learning to Read  (1854)

Very soon the Yankee teachers

Came down and set up school;

But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—

It was agin’ their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide

Book learning from our eyes;

Knowledge didn’t agree with slavery—

‘Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal

A little from the book,

And put the words together,

And learn by hook or crook.

I remember Uncle Caldwell,

Who took pot-liquor fat

And greased the pages of his book,

And hid it in his hat.

And had his master ever seen

The leaves upon his head,

He’d have thought them greasy papers,

But nothing to be read.

And there was Mr. Turner’s Ben,

Who heard the children spell,

And picked the words right up by heart,

And learned to read ‘em well.

Well, the Northern folks kept sending

The Yankee teachers down;

And they stood right up and helped us,

Though Rebs did sneer and frown.

And, I longed to read my Bible,

For precious words it said;

But when I begun to learn it,

Folks just shook their heads,

And said there is no use trying,

Oh! Chloe, you’re too late;

But as I was rising sixty,

I had no time to wait.

So I got a pair of glasses,

And straight to work I went,

And never stopped till I could read

The hymns and Testament.

Then I got a little cabin—

A place to call my own—

And I felt as independent

As the queen upon her throne.

Sources

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins.  “The Slave Mother.” Public Domain.

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins.  “Ethiopia.”  Public Domain.

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins.  “Learning to Read.” Public Domain.

Kurant, Wendy.  Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution.  2019, English Open Textbooks, https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/19, CCA-SA 4.0