ENGLISH 1102 COMPOSITION II INSTRUCTOR PROFESSOR ELIZABETH M. OWENS

Life Education Works Friends References Death

France Ellen Watkins was born free in the slave city of Baltimore Maryland. After her mother died when she was three years old in 1828, Watkins was raised by her aunt and uncle

She was educated at the Academy for Negro Youth, a school run by her uncle Rev. William Watkins, who was a civil rights activist. He was a major influence on her life and work. She never experienced the hardships of slavery and yet she would devote her entire life to the abolitionist movement, and what she called “a brighter coming day” .

France was a poet, Lecturer, and Author, She is considered to be the first black woman to make a living from writing. France was an educator and poet by trade

In 1850 Watkins moved to Ohio, where she worked as the first woman teacher at Union Seminary, established by the Ohio conference of the AME Church. In 1953 Frances join the American Anti-Slavery Society and became a traveling lecturer for the group.

In 1860, She married Fenton Harper, a widower with three children. They had a daughter Mary Harper together in 1862. Fenton died in 1864.

Frances Harper was a strong supporter of prohibition and woman’s suffrage. She was also active in the Unitarian Church, which supported abolition. She was connected with national leaders in suffrage. In 1866 she gave a moving speech before the National Woman’s Rights Convention, demanding equal rights for all, including black women. Frances continued with her political activism, and in 1897 she was elected Vice-President of the National Association of Colored Women.

God Bless our native land,

Land of the newly free,

Oh may she ever stand

For truth and liberty.

God bless our native land,

Where sleep our kindred dead,

Let peace at thy command,

Above their graves be shed,

God help our native land,

Bring surcease to her strife,

And shower from thy hand

A more abundant life,

God bless our native land,

Her homes and children bless,

Oh may she ever stand

For truth and righteousness.

Susan B. Anthony Sojourner Truth Fredrick Douglas Elizabeth Cady Stanton To name a few.

Frances Ellen-Watkins Harper also Known as “The Bronze Muse” was considered to be the first black women to make a living from writing.

Forest Leaves, Verse, 1845 Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, 1854 (sold over 10,000 copies) Moses: A Story of the Nile, 1869 Sketches of Southern Life, 1872 Light Beyond the Darkness, 1890 The Martyr of Alabama and other poems, 1894 Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted, novel, 1892 Idylls of the Bible, 1901 In Memoriam, Wm. McKinley, 1901 “Free Labor”

We may be able to tell the story of departed nations and conquering chieftains who have added pages of tears and blood to the world’s history; but our education is deficient if we are perfectly ignorant how to guide the little feet that are springing up so gladly in our path, and to see in undeveloped possibilities gold more fine than the pavements of heaven and gems more precious than the foundationsof the holy city.

By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Biography: Frances Ellen Watkins, University of Minnesota Wikipedia.org, Frances_ Harper Poemhunter.com Findagrave.com Womenshistory.com