Abolitionism

Editor’s Note: In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re sharing profiles of remarkable female activists from American history we think you should know (if you don’t already). Back in 1866, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper stood before the 11th National Women’s Rights Convention in New York City and said, “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.” The Civil War had ended one year before, and though slavery had come to an end in the United States, Black men and women did not possess the same rights as white Americans. Watkins Harper was determined to change that. Born in 1825 to a free Black family in Baltimore, Maryland, Watkins Harper was an orphan by the age of three and subsequently raised by her aunt and uncle. Her uncle, the Reverend William Watkins, was an abolitionist and founder of his own school, the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, where Watkins Harper studied until she was 13. She took a job in her teen years as a maid for a white family who also happened to own a bookstore. An avid reader and talented writer, Watkins Harper spent much of her free time in the bookstore, according to the National Women’s History Museum, and when she was 21 published her first volume of poetry titled, Forest Leaves. Her writing career continued to flourish, as Watkins Harper went on to publish Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), Moses: A Story of the Nile (1869), Poems (1871), Sketches of Southern Life (1872), and Atlanta Offering: Poems (1895), and what is widely believed to be the first short story published by an African-American women, The Two Offers, which ran in the The Anglo-African Magazine in June and July of 1859. Her prolific writing made her one of the most famous, if not the most famous, African-American woman writer of the 19th century. When she wasn’t writing, Watkins Harper toured the U.S. giving lectures and speeches promoting the equal rights of African-Americans, but also African-American women – making her one of the first Black activists to advocate for a kind of intersectional feminism (a term that wasn't coined until the 1980s). She was an abolitionist and suffragist – which in the 19th century was not as common as one might think. Many abolitionists did not necessarily believe that African-Americans should have the right to vote, or held differing views on whether Black men or women should be allowed to vote. In her 1866 speech, “We Are All Bound Up Together,” Watkins Harper proclaimed, “This grand and glorious revolution which has commenced, will fail to reach its climax of success, until throughout the length and breath of the American Republic, the nation shall be so color-blind, as to know no man by the color of his skin or the curl of his hair. It will then have no privileged class, trampling upon outraging the unprivileged classes, but will be then one great privileged nation, whose privilege will be to produce the loftiest manhood and womanhood that humanity can attain.” The National Women’s Rights Convention split the very next day over the subject of the passing of the 15th Amendment, which would grant suffrage to Black men. Watkins Harper along with other suffragists like Frederick Douglass joined forces to continue to fight for universal voting rights, forming the American Woman Suffrage Association. Watkins Harper spent the rest of her life fighting for equal rights for African-American women. She was a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, which is still active to this day. She died at the age of 85 in 1911, just nine years before the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting women of all races the right to vote. ◾ Below, one of Watkins Harper's most famous poems. The Slave Auction(1857) The sale began—young girls were there, Defenceless in their wretchedness,Whose stifled sobs of deep despair Revealed their anguish and distress. And mothers stood with streaming eyes, And saw their dearest children sold;Unheeded rose their bitter cries, While tyrants bartered them for gold. And woman, with her love and truth— For these in sable forms may dwell—Gaz'd on the husband of her youth, With anguish none may paint or tell. And men, whose sole crime was their hue, The impress of their maker's hand,And frail and shrinking children, too, Were gathered in that mournful band. Ye who have laid your love to rest, And wept above their lifeless clay,Know not the anguish of that breast, Whose lov'd are rudely torn away. Ye may not know how desolate Are bosoms rudely forced to part,And how a dull and heavy weightWill press the life-drops from the heart.

Abolitionism

She Advocated for Intersectional Feminism — in the 19th Century

The Story Exchange

Abolitionism

She Advocated for Intersectional Feminism — in the 19th Century

The Story Exchange

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