Frances Harper was a poet, teacher, and writer. She is also regarded as an important member of the abolitionist movement and one of the first African American writers to be published in the United States. She had a long career, starting with her first book of poetry published when she was 20 years old.
‘A Double Standard’ by Frances Harper is a powerful condemnation of gender inequalities and social hypocrisy, offering a timeless critique that continues to resonate.
Do you blame me that I loved him?
If when standing all alone
I cried for bread a careless world
Pressed to my lips a stone.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s ‘The Slave Mother’ portrays an enslaved woman’s anguish, emphasizing the enduring power of love amid oppression.
Heard you that shriek? It rose
So wildly on the air,
It seem’d as if a burden’d heart
Was breaking in despair.
‘Learning to Read’ by Frances Harper is a powerful poem about formerly enslaved people learning to read and gaining independence and strength through education.
Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—
It was agin’ their rule.
‘Bury Me in a Free Land’ depicts the cruel custom of slavery that prevailed in America. This poem presents the speaker’s wish to be buried in a land where no men are treated as slaves.
Have you ever imagined what it felt like observing innocent lives being traded at the slave auction? It is vividly portrayed through the eyes of Frances Harper in her poem ‘The Slave Auction’.
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