Biography
In the 1860s, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a free, Black, young woman working as a teacher in Pennsylvania when her home state of Maryland passed a law stating that ANY African American who returned to Maryland would be sold into slavery. This prompted the already ambitious educator to devote herself as an organizer in the abolition movement. She launched her speaking career when she delivered an antislavery talk, “Education and the Elevation of the Colored Race,” in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1854. In touring the country as a speaker she spoke about the intersectionality between race, class and gender. In 1866, Harper delivered a famous speech at the National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York entitled, “We Are All Bound Up Together,” urging the suffragists in attendance to include African American women in their movement. Harper’s lifelong activist career included roles as a co-founder and vice president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and the director of the American Association of Colored Youth and was the superintendent of the Colored Sections of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Unions.
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Yesterday was Frances Harper’s birthday and today we’re still celebrating! In the 1860s, Frances Harper was a free, Black, young woman working as a teacher in Pennsylvania when her home state of Maryland passed a law stating that ANY African American who returned to Maryland pic.twitter.com/8STJol40TM
— Suffrage100MA (@Suffrage100MA) September 25, 2020
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March 2021