​HARPER AT 200

Harper and the Temperance Movement

A woman sat beneath the shadow of her home, while the dark waves of intemperance [overindulgence in alcohol] dashed against human hearts and hearth-stones, but there came an hour when she found that she could do something else besides wring her hands and weep over the ravages of the liquor traffic, which had darkened so many lives and desolated so many homes. . . . Victor Hugo has spoken of the nineteenth century as being woman’s era, and among the most noticeable epochs in this era is the uprising of women against the twin evils of slavery and intemperance, which had foisted themselves like leeches upon the civilization of the present age. In the great anti-slavery conflict women had borne a part, but after the storm cloud of battle had rolled away, it was found that an enemy, old and strong and deceptive, was warring against the best interests of society; not simply an enemy to one race, but an enemy to all races–an enemy that had entrenched itself in the strongholds of appetite and avarice [greed], and was upheld by fashion, custom and legislation. 

 Excerpt from Frances E. W. Harper, “The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Colored Woman,” A.M.E. Church Review, 12 (1888).

It is impossible to talk about temperance in America, without recognizing the shaping work of Black activists like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1922). The racism and anti-immigrant sentiment in the white temperance movement during the nineteenth century  muted the voices and work of Black temperance activists in popular discourse. Unsurprisingly, this marginalization strongly influenced the work of many contemporary historians. Consequently, we are less likely to think of Black activists like Harper, Amanda Berry Smith, Lucy Thurman, Sarah Early, Rosetta Lawson, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Hattie Purvis, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Frederick Douglass or Booker T. Washington when we think of temperance activism. But for Harper, like so many of her peers mentioned above, temperance was a major part of her work as an activist, a writer, and a thinker.

Black temperance activism has a long and storied past. In 1787, The Free African Society of Philadelphia denied membership to “inebriates” in its’ founding documents; James Forten, Sr., created an organization to combat drunkenness in 1809 and received public support from Bishop Richard Allen and Absalom Jones—two of the most prominent clerics and activists of their time. Frederick Douglass pledged himself publicly to temperance and was known to abstain. Many Black women, ministers, and abolitionists formed Black temperance societies in Baltimore, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Middletown, and New Haven [1]. Black temperance societies promoted sobriety, Christian morals, and Black respectability linking their activism to both abolitionism and suffrage. Perhaps more interestingly, in the Colored Conventions Movement, an ostensibly political movement, temperance is a consistent theme as an inhibitor of progress, financial independence and Black collective success.  

Harper is a notable exception to the marginalization of Black temperance activists. From 1883 to 1890 she led the work in Black communities for the heretofore white national Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Harper was invited to join and lead the work by second president, Frances Willard. At that time, Black people were usually denied admission to white temperance organizations. Consequently, temperance activists worked separately on a shared problem—the negative effects of alcoholism and drinking on husbands, fathers, and sons who were often the primary or sole providers of their families. But, as historian Glenda Gilmore writes, following Harper’s appointment, “Black women saw in the WCTU a chance to build a Christian community that could serve as a model of interracial cooperation on other fronts.”[2] This optimism was more aspirational than substantive. Black members of the Georgia WCTU soon petitioned Harper to create a separate Black arm in response to the intransigent racism of white women. Harper agreed. But she remonstrated white women publicly for their racism writing that white women had not yet “subordinated the spirit of caste to the spirit of Christ” which made working together impossible. Harper’s message was clear: practicing the unchristian sin of racism was more important to white women than working together to save families and indeed the nation from the perils of addiction and disease. Black women activists in Georgia joined many other temperance chapters in the South and beyond and continued to share information about the dangers of drinking, hold temperance campaigns, and fundraise to support families destroyed by alcoholism. Harper’s leadership speaks to the power of her temperance activism both at the national level as a leader of the WCTU and the work she did among Black people. 

Harper’s temperance work allows us to not just recognize that Black activists were active in the temperance movement at all levels, but to see how their work differed from white activists. Black activists focused their ire and public demonstrations against the liquor trade versus the people who drank to excess. Special scorn was reserved for the sellers who sold alcohol; the people, institutions and even the states that profited off the misery of the drinkers. Their analysis included considerations of the ways that race, gender, and structural inequality produced both drunkenness and disproportionate effects of alcoholism both collectively and individually. While white activists heaped blame and shame on alcoholics, Black activists refused to position people who drank as moral failures whose weak sinfulness was solely to blame for their condition. 

An excellent example of this nuanced analysis can be found in Harper’s serialized novel, The Two Offers. One of the main characters, Laura, dies alone on her deathbed because her husband had “found other attractions that lay beyond the pale of home…gambling, song, laughter, wine and careless mirth.” The Two Offers is a cautionary temperance tale which describes vividly the deleterious effects of alcohol on the individual, the family and consequently society. Laura becomes the perspective through which readers see Harper’s critique of superficial standards of materialistic success and its vices. Published in the Anglo African, a popular Black newspaper, Black readers were the audience Harper hoped most to convince to avoid the perils of materialism as opposed to hard work and sober living. And women like Laura, were Harper’s target audience who, with their children, suffered most from the destructive effects of poverty and solo child rearing when husbands and fathers drank their salaries in bars and salons.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is the most well-known of Black temperance activists. But her hagiographic presence should invite us to learn more about the work of many Black women and men who promoted temperance in the Black community and the nation. Harper’s experiences with the WCTU offers real-time lessons about the limits of inter-racial alliances even as we are reminded of legacies of Black intellectual activism grounded as it was in theoretical engagement of capitalism and exploitative structures that underpin and hurt our communities still today.

Works Cited

[1] Yacavone, Donald. “The Transformation of the Black Temperance Movement, 1827-1854: An Interpretation.” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988).

[2] Gilmore, Glenda. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina 1896-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. 

[3] Block, Shelley. “A Revolutionary Aim: The Rhetoric of Temperance in the Anglo-African Magazine.” American Periodicals, vol. 12, 2002, pp. 9–24. JSTOR

References

Schrad, Mark Lawrence. “The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism.” Politico, February 6th, 2021. 

Sinha, Manisha. “The Other Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,” Common Place the Journal of American Life. Winter, 2016.

“Black Women in the WTCU,” Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells, https://scalar.usc.edu/works/willard-and-wells/black-women-and-the-wctu

“Black women of the WCTU: A Research Database Project”, The Center for Women’s History and Leadership, https://cwhlevanston.org/digital-exhibits/black-women-of-the-wctu-research-database-project/ 

Credits

Written by Denise Burgher