F is for Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
(1825-1911)
Doing this project required I scour and seek out little known women writers. I had no idea what to expect or who I would happen upon, but so far each woman has been a miracle personified. I also wanted to honor women of a variety of ethnicities and beliefs, so discovering the phenomenal woman who was Frances Ellen Watkins Harper delighted me to no end.
We are kindred spirits, after all. We are both mothers, both artists, both writers, poets and activists. We both seek to free the voices of others who cannot speak for themselves. One of her literary nick names was “The Bronze Muse.”
She was a 19th century African American born to a free black family in a slave state, Maryland. She was orphaned at 3 and was raised by an Aunt and Uncle. Her Uncle ran a school for free black children which insured Frances would know how to read and write as well as be a practiced thinker.
Perhaps because she was born in these unusual circumstances, she learned to rise above her circumstances to create a better world. She was the best known African American poet since the colonial times poet, Phillis Wheatley. (She will be featured as our A-Z Challenge P representative.) She also published the first short story by an African American in 1859: “The Two Offers.” Her collection Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects was published in 1854. It sold more than 10,000 copies.
She was widowed after four years and left with a small daughter, Mary. She went back to the lecture circuit with her little girl and supported herself in her endeavors to write, speak and change the world.
When African American women were largely excluded from the suffrage movement, she gathered with a group of like minded women to organize a suffrage gfroup of their own, National Association of Colored Women.
In an obituary, W.E.B. duBois said that it was "for her attempts to forward literature among colored people that Frances Harper deserves to be remembered.... She took her writing soberly and earnestly, she gave her life to it."
This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.
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