Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
1825-1911 19th century
Putting one's faith into poems for those who have no platform.
Who was Frances Ellen Watkins Harper?
Born free in Baltimore and orphaned at three, she became a teacher, poet and abolitionist lecturer, travelling from town to town to speak before often hostile rooms. She published collections that sold in the thousands, helped fugitives on the road north, and after the war went on writing for the Black women of the South. Her Methodist faith runs through everything she wrote.
In their own words
Let me make the songs for the people, / Songs for the old and young; / Songs to stir like a battle-cry / Wherever they are sung.
Make me a grave where'er you will, / In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill; / Make it among earth's humblest graves, / But not in a land where men are slaves.
Go work in my vineyard, said the Lord.