User:HollyLovesHistory/Frances Harper

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Portrait Drawing

Notes

Evaluation of Frances Harper article:

1. There is no header for her suffrage activism, even though she is a prominent figure in the movement.
2. There are misinterpreted citations, as Wikipedia states. I will have to either eliminate this false information, or better interpret the citations. I could also find additional information to support these claims.

As a side note, Jstor has many articles about Frances Harper, so I will be able to find reliable information. I'll be sure to check for biases, though!

Suffrage Activism

Activism Techniques

Frances Harper's activism took an intersectional approach, which combined her campaign for African American civil rights with her advocacy for women's rights.One of Harper's major concerns regarded the brutal treatment Black women—including Harper herself—encountered on public transportation, and this matter foregrounded her advocacy for women's suffrage. In the 1860s and beyond, Harper delivered various speeches pertaining to women's issues and more specifically, Black women's issues. One of her speeches, "We Are All Bound Up Together," delivered in 1866 at the National Woman's Rights Convention in New York City, emphasized the need to raise awareness for African American suffrage while also advocating for women's suffrage. In this speech, she stated:

"We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You tried that in the case of the Negro...You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man's hand against me...While there exists this brutal element in society which tramples upon the feeble and treads down the weak, I tell you that if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America."

After Harper delivered this speech, the National Woman's Rights Convention agreed to form the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), which incorporated African American suffrage into the Women's Suffrage Movement. Harper served as a member of AERA's Finance Committee. AERA was short-lived, however, ending when Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which would grant African American men the right to vote. Some of AERA's suffragists did not support the Amendment's aim to enfranchise Black men without extending suffrage rights to women. Harper, unlike those suffragists, supported the Fifteenth Amendment, and endorsed the Amendment at AERA's final meeting.Shortly afterward, AERA divided into two separate movements: the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported the Amendment, and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which did not support the Amendment. It is important to note, however, that neither organization fully promoted the rights of Black women.As Harper, along with Frederick Douglass and other proponents of African American suffrage, supported the Fifteenth Amendment, she helped found the AWSA.After all, Harper did not want to undermine the progress of Black men by choosing to fight for women's suffrage over African American suffrage.Harper did, however, support the proposed Sixteenth Amendment, which would have granted women the right to vote.After the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Harper also encouraged formerly enslaved people to vote.

In addition to delivering speeches, Harper also promoted her intersectional suffrage advocacy in later years by helping found the National Association for Colored Women (NACW) in 1896.Harper was often the only Black woman at the conferences she attended, so she helped form the NACW in response to the racism from white suffragists. In 1897, Harper became the NACW's vice president and used her platform to advocate for Black women's civil rights.

Suffrage in Literature

Frances Harper also included themes pertaining to suffrage in her writing. For instance, her novel Minnie’s Sacrifice, published in 1869—in the same year as the Fifteenth Amendment debates—describes the vote as a defense mechanism for Black women as victims of racial violence in the Reconstruction South.Minnie's Sacrifice also highlights the intersectional struggles faced by Black women. For example, scholar Jen McDaneld argues in her analysis of the novel that the need for protection of the law, which the vote could help Black women obtain, is "rooted in both radicalized and gendered injustices that cannot be extricated from one another."Near the end of the novel, Minnie expresses in great length a desire for Black women's suffrage, contending the right of suffrage should not be based upon "service or sex, but on the common base of humanity." Responding to her male friend, Louis, who believes the nation is "not prepared for" Black women's suffrage, Minnie states:

"I cannot recognize that the negro man is the only one who has pressing claims at this hour. To-day our government needs woman's conscience as well as man's judgment. And while I would not throw a straw in the way of the colored man, even though I know that he would vote against me as soon as he gets his vote, yet I do think that woman should have some power to defend herself from oppression, and equal laws as if she were a man."

Through Minnie's statement, Harper conveys a desire for Black women to achieve suffrage rights, in order to defend themselves from oppression. Shortly after making this claim, however, Minnie is killed due to racial violence. Minnie is not protected by the law, and she is ultimately a victim of the oppression she protests against in her pro-suffrage rhetoric. In this excerpt, Minnie also shows support for the Black man's vote, stating how she "would not throw a straw in the way of the colored man." At the same time, though, similar to the speaker in "The Deliverance," Minnie also expresses uncertainty regarding how these men might cast their ballots. In general, within Minnie's Sacrifice, Harper communicates a determination for Black women to obtain the right to suffrage.

Alongside her prose, Harper's poetry also presents suffrage activism. Her poem, "The Deliverance," published in her 1872 anthology, Sketches of Southern Life, discusses the vote through the lens of fictional Black female narratives during the Reconstruction era. As scholar Elizabeth A. Petrino argues, in "The Deliverance," Harper communicates how "women within the home are the catalysts for political rebellion" and likewise "posits women as moral exemplars and centers of political power within the home." During her years of activism, Harper expressed concern regarding how individuals would cast their ballots once granted the right to vote.Harper's "The Deliverance" conveys these sentiments through vignettes telling how different fictional men exercised their right to vote. Harper writes:

But when John Thomas Reeder brought

His wife some flour and meat,

And told he had sold his vote

For something good to eat,

You ought to seen Aunt Kitty raise,

And heard her blaze away;

She gave the meat and flour a toss,

And said they should not stay.

And I should think he felt quite cheap

For voting the wrong side;

And when Aunt Kitty scolded him,

He just stood up and cried.

In these particular stanzas, Harper communicates apprehension toward the voting population, questioning how individuals will exercise their right to vote. As the character John Thomas Reeder "sold his vote" for food, Aunt Kitty expresses her frustration that not all people—and particularly men, in this instance—fully understand the importance of the vote. Not only does Aunt Kitty, the sole female figure in the text, "toss" the meat and flour, but she also scolds Reeder and makes him cry. Reversing traditional gender roles, Aunt Kitty holds the power in her encounter with Reeder. However, Reeder has societal power in possessing the right to vote. By granting Aunt Kitty agency in "The Deliverance," Harper expresses a desire for Black women to obtain suffrage rights. In addition to "The Deliverance," Harper's poem, "The Fifteenth Amendment," celebrates the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote:

Ring out! ring out! your sweetest chimes,

Ye bells, that call to praise;

Let every heart with gladness thrill,

And songs of joyful triumph raise.

Shake off the dust, O rising race!

Crowned as a brother and a man;

Justice to-day asserts her claim,

And from thy brow fades out the ban.

With freedom's chrism upon thy head,

Her precious ensign in thy hand,

Go place thy once despised name

Amid the noblest of the land

In these stanzas, Harper includes exclamation points and positive imagery, such as "chimes" of the bells, and a command to "shake off the dust." Harper additionally incorporates positive diction, such as "gladness" and "joyful triumph." Harper also uses regal language to describe the newly enfranchised population. Upon receiving voting rights, Black men are "crowned" and become "amid the noblest of the land," posing a contrast with their "once despised name" that Harper references. Thus, Harper's positive tone in "The Fifteenth Amendment" aligns with her previous support for the Fifteenth Amendment.

Scholarship of Suffrage

There is very little scholarship detailing Frances Harper's involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement. Indeed, Harper does not appear in the History of Woman Suffrage anthology written by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were original members of the NWSA. As scholar Jen McDaneld argues, the "suffrage split" that created NWSA and AWSA alienated Harper—who appeared to refuse white feminism—from the Women's Suffrage Movement.

Further Reading

Minnie's Sacrifice, 1869

Sketches of Southern Life, 1872