significantly increased the socializing between the
races and launched new African-American writ-
ings for a wider reading public. The magazine
monthly, from 1923 to 1942 and thereafter a quar-
terly until its demise in 1949, contained poetry,
plays, fiction, reviews, and assorted essays. Con-
tributors who filled its pages included ZORA NEALE
HURSTON, Hughes, CLAUDE MCKAY, ALICE DUNBAR-
NELSON, Paul Robeson, Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.,
and Mary Bethune.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jones, Eugene Kinckle. “Co-operation and Opportu-
nity.” Opportunity 1 (January 1923): 4–5.
Wilson, Sondra Kathryn, ed. The Opportunity Reader.
New York: Modern Library, 1999.
Margaret Whitt
Our Nig Harriet Wilson (1859)
Written in 1859, HARRIET WILSON’s Our Nig con-
tinues to generate critical interest and discussion.
Identified by HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., in 1984 as the
first African-American novel published in Amer-
ica by a woman of color, the novel went for years
with very little notice or attention. The novel was
assumed to be the work of a white author initially,
and it does not seem to have been either a popular
or a critical success when it first appeared. There are
several reasons for this, including its controversial
portrait of the North and especially of Mrs. Bell-
mont, a white, middle-class northerner “imbued
with Southern principles” who resembles a jealous
plantation mistress. The book’s full title, Our Nig,
or the Sketches of a Free Black in a Two Story White
House, North, Showing that Slavery’s Shadows Fall
Even Here, clearly suggested the hypocrisy of well-
meaning, religious white northerners. The novel
also included the two interracial marriages of Mag
Smith, a white woman discarded by her lover. Left
with no friends, she marries Jim, a black man. The
two have a daughter, Frado, the title character of
the novel. When Jim dies, Mag marries again—also
to a black man. Wilson’s sympathetic portrayal of
Mag would have been unsettling to white female
readers accustomed to the sentimental novel tra-
dition. It would also have confronted their racial
prejudices about the possible romantic relation-
ships that might exist between white women and
black men.
Our Nig is also stylistically a conundrum. It is a
mixture of fiction and autobiography. While this is
not an unusual characteristic of works of the time,
Wilson switches between first- and third-person
voice frequently. The introduction states that the
novel developed out of Wilson’s need to make
money to take care of her son, so some editorial
lapses might be due to the state of emergency in
which the author found herself, without the luxury
of time to take care of such matters. The work also
tries to balance the genres of the slave narrative
and sentimental novel, which could also account
for the problematic shifts.
However, Frado is clearly based on Wilson, as
their life stories are nearly identical. After Mag re-
marries, she abandons Frado at the Bellmonts’. Mr.
Bellmont; the two sons, Jack and James; and Aunt
Abby treat her kindly, but Mrs. Bellmont and her
daughter, Mary, beat and abuse Frado in a man-
ner common in slave households. Frado’s life as an
indentured servant is as cruel as any story found
in slave narratives. No family member is able to
convince Mrs. Bellmont to stop mistreating poor,
sickly Frado. James and Abby are devoutly reli-
gious but buckle under Mrs. Bellmont’s control of
the home. The novel thus illustrates the religious
(Christian) hypocrisy that allowed the horrible
treatment of women and slavery in 19th-century
America. Both James and Jack befriend Frado in
scenes reminiscent of the typical sentimental ro-
mance, but neither man is able to rescue Frado
from their mother’s temper. Ultimately, Frado
stands up to Mrs. Bellmont; after nearly 12 years,
she leaves the “two-story white house.”
Frado marries a man pretending to be an es-
caped slave, who later leaves her and their young
son. After years of beatings, Frado is not physically
able to work. To support herself and her very sick
son, she sits down to write her story. The novel
is a testament of the abuse of women, the indi-
gent, and the African American—whether free or
slave—in the domestic sphere. Such treatment, the
novel indicates, is condoned by society. Wilson’s400 Our Nig