Frances Harper

    Frances Harper was a social reformer who agitated for abolitionism, civil rights, and women’s suffrage. She was also the best-read Black woman poet of the 19th Century.

    Listen 1:00
    Mrs. Francis E. Watkins-Harper, 1902 (Gibson, J. W. (John William, b. 1841)/Public domain)

    Mrs. Francis E. Watkins-Harper, 1902 (Gibson, J. W. (John William, b. 1841)/Public domain)

    Frances Harper was a social reformer who agitated for abolitionism, civil rights, and women’s suffrage. She was also the best-read Black woman poet of the 19th Century.

    The daughter of free black parents, she was drawn into public life when sexist laws left her destitute after being widowed. In 1854, she moved to Philadelphia to work on the Underground Railroad.

    Harper made several tours of the South during pre-emancipation to observe the conditions of the enslaved, and then during Reconstruction to document the ways families were adjusting to freedom.

    In 1896 she helped organize the National Association of Colored Women of which she was elected a vice president.

    A prolific writer, Harper is the first African American author of a published short story, The Two Offers, and is best known for her novel, Lola Leroy.

    Her poem The Slave Mother was an inspiration to Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved.

    Part of the poem says :

    He’s is not hers, although she bore
    For him a mother’s pains;
    He is not hers, although her blood
    Is coursing through his veins!

    He is not hers, for cruel hands
    May rudely tear apart
    The only wreath of household love
    That binds her breaking heart.

    WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on financial support from readers like you. Please give today.

    Want a digest of WHYY’s programs, events & stories? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

    Together we can reach 100% of WHYY’s fiscal year goal