Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was an author and activist whose groundbreaking legacy has been foundational for Black women writers and organizers alike. Born free in Baltimore, orphaned at an early age, and adopted into her activist uncle’s household, she grew up to become the most popular Black poet and prolific Black novelist of the nineteenth century. This exhibit honors Harper as a seasoned activist, a woman anti-slavery speaker, a Black woman in higher education, a writer, as co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and as an organizational leader in the movements for Black and women’s political rights and dignity.
Credits
Curators: Samantha de Vera, assistant professor, History, UC Irvine; Courtney Murray, PhD Candidate, English and African American Studies, Penn State University; and Sherita L. Johnson, associate professor of English and Director of the Africana Research Center, Penn State University. Original curator: Monet Timmons, English PhD Student, University of Delaware. Created for Dr. Gabrielle Foreman’s ENGL 667 Spring 2019 Course.
Production Direction: Gabrielle Foreman, professor of English, African American Studies, and History, Penn State University.
Contributors: Rachel Fernandes, PhD candidate, English Language and Literatures, Queen’s University; Chasia Elzina Jeffries, Ph.D. student, Culture & Theory Program, UC Irvine; Brandi Locke, Postdoctoral Fellow, Penn State University; Lauren Barnes, Dual Title Ph.D., English and African American and Diaspora Studies, Penn State University; and Victoria McKeller-Peoples, graduate student, History, Penn State University. Proofread by Kaitlyn Tanis, librarian, University of Delaware. Technical review by Lauren Cooper, digital scholarship librarian, Penn State University.
Further Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Gale, a Cengage Company, and Accessible Archives Inc.® for granting permission for the use of the materials from 19th Century U.S. Newspaper and African American Newspapers: The 19th Century.
The Colored Conventions Project works with teaching partners and their students to create digital content on the rich history of Black political organizing in the nineteenth-century. Visit our Teaching Partners page to browse the curriculum.
Images:
- Hallie Quinn. “Mrs. F. E. W. Harper.” Source: Documenting the American South. https://oldsite.coloredconventions.org/ohio-organizing/biographies/frances-ellen-watkins-harper/
- “Mrs. F. E. W. Harper.” New York Public Library Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-f262-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
- “Mrs. F. E. W. Harper, Author and Lecturer, Philadelphia, Pa.” Schomburg General Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library via Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mrs._F._E._W._Harper,_Author_and_Lecturer,_Philadelphia,_Pa.jpg
- “Women of distinction – remarkable in works and invincible in character (1893).” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Women_of_distinction_-_remarkable_in_works_and_invincible_in_character_(1893)_(14598047448).jpg
- “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1825-1911.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002698208/
- “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911).” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/new-tactics-for-a-new-generation-1890-1915/western-states-pave-the-way/i-speak-of-wrongs-frances-ellen-watkins-harper/
