to free parents in Baltimore, Maryland, on Sep-
tember 24, 1825, and orphaned before the age of
three, Harper was placed in the care of her aunt
and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. William Watkins. She at-
tended the William Watkins Academy for Negro
Youth, founded by her uncle, where he taught her
the classics, Bible, rhetoric, and antislavery writ-
ings. At age 14, Harper hired herself out as a seam-
stress and a housekeeper to the Armstrong family.
Using books she borrowed from their bookstore,
Harper advanced her education and enhanced her
intellectual growth. In 1839, she published her first
poems in local newspapers and abolitionist peri-
odicals. She published her first collection of verse
and prose, Forest Leaves, in 1845.
In 1850 Harper became the first woman to
teach at Union Seminary, a vocational school near
Columbus, Ohio, which later became Wilberforce
University. She later accepted a teaching position
in Little York, Pennsylvania, where she witnessed
the suffering of African Americans bound in legal
slavery. In 1853, Harper moved to Philadelphia
to devote herself exclusively to the anti-slavery
movement and the Underground Railroad. In
1854, she served as a full-time lecturer and po-
etic orator for the Maine Anti-Slavery Society,
touring the northeastern United States, Canada,
Michigan, and Ohio. Between 1865 and 1870, she
toured the southern states. Harper, who lectured
without notes, became known for her fiery ora-
tory on the issues of racism, feminism, and clas-
sism. She also became a prominent speaker for and
member of several leading women’s organizations,
including the American Woman Suffrage Associa-
tion, the National Association of Colored Women
(NACW), the National Council of Women of the
United States, the American Equal Rights Asso-
ciation, and the Women’s Christian Temperance
Union. She often incorporated her own original
prose and poetry in her fiery addresses.
Simultaneously with her work in the antislavery
and women’s movements, Harper launched her lit-
erary career as a poet, publishing the collection of
poems and essays Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects
in 1854, which pioneered the tradition of African-
American protest poetry. Her best-known volume
of poems, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects centers
on slavery and its horrors, religion, heroism, racial
pride, women’s rights, and temperance. In it she
included “Bury Me in a Free Land” and “The Slave
Mother,” which address the separation of families
and the devastating pain that mothers, in par-
ticular, suffered in bondage. Both poems are still
anthologized and highly regarded today. Harper’s
other volumes include the long blank-verse alle-
gory, Moses, A Story of the Nile (1868); Sketches of
Southern Life (1872), a series of six dialect poems
narrated by Aunt Chloe, who exemplifies feminist
thought and womanly strength; and The Martyr of
Alabama and Other Poems (1894). Critics note that
most of Harper’s poems are “crafted with great
care” and that she was unafraid to experiment with
form and technique.
Over the years, Harper continued to be a pro-
lific writer, publishing poetry, letters, and essays
in national and international abolitionist jour-
nals such as the Liberator, Provincial Freeman,
Frederick Douglass’s Monthly, and the National
Anti-Slavery Standard. Her works also appeared in
African-American periodicals. Along with FRED-
ERICK DOUGLASS and several others, Harper coed-
ited and contributed to the Weekly Anglo-African
Magazine, the earliest African-American literary
journal. In 1859, Harper published “Two Offers,”
generally considered the first short story by an
African American. In it Harper explores two cen-
tral themes, temperance and a woman’s right to
choose not to marry. The story charts the lives of
two cousins—Laura, who believes she will become
an old maid if she does not marry, and Janette,
who wishes to remain independent and pursue a
career in writing. Harper juxtaposes the women’s
class differences—one is the product of privilege,
while the other comes from poverty—and reveals
how, ultimately, the contrast in the lives of the two
women represents the true choices found in the
two offers: independence, autonomy, and life ver-
sus oppression, depression, and death.
During her career, Harper published several
novels designed for political and religious advocacy,
concentrating specifically on racial identity and
commitment to social change. Three of her serial-
ized novellas, Sowing and Reaping: A Temperance
Story (1867), Minnie’s Sacrifice (1867–1868), andHarper, Frances Ellen Watkins 233