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Frances Ellen Watkins was born in Baltimore on September 24, 1825. Her parent’s names are not recorded and it is believed that her mother died when she was three. She was raised by relatives and attended the William Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, a school founded by her uncle Rev. William Watkins. One biographer noted that her commitment to abolition and other social welfare crusades, as well as her familiarity with classical and Christian mythology and her reputation for oratory and deportment were obviously influenced by her education at the academy.

The Watkins were prominent members of the African American intelligentsia As part of a well-respected free black family she could have chosen to enjoy the life of a notated literary figure. She chose not to do so and became a successful writer, speaker and reformer. She was the first African American to have her short stories published and in her own day was a widely regarded author.

“At a time when other literary women were suffering from emotional ailments Harper decided that her personal survival and well-being were inextricably linked to the survival and well-being of the larger society and that confrontation and not silence was the way to mental, if not physical health.” She believed that the progress of American Society was threatened by slavery and by religious and social hypocrisy and she wrote to educate an emerging literate population.

Watkins Harper attended the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia as an adult and would be classified as a Unitarian Christian. In an essay entitled Christianity she wrote, “Christianity is a system claiming God for its author and the welfare of man for its object.”

The motivation for her ethics and action came from her religious beliefs. She believed in a loving God, the dignity of human beings, and the teachings of Jesus. She, like other activists before and since have looked to the golden rule and Jesus’s stand for justice as their ethical guides. In one of her last essays, entitled, True and False Politeness(p400) she writes:

True and False Politeness

False politeness can cast a glamour over fashionable follies and popular vices and shrink from uttering unpalatable truths, when truth is needed more than flattery.

True politeness, tender as love and faithful as truth, values intrinsic worth more than artificial surroundings. It will stem the current of the world's disfavor, rather than float ignobly on the tide of popular favor, with the implied disrespect to our common human nature, that it is a flaccid thing to be won by sophistry, and satisfied with shams.

False politeness is an outgrowth from the surface of life. True politeness is the fair outflowing of a kind and thoughtful life, the sweet ripe fruit of a religion which gives to life its best expression and to humanity its crowning glory.

True politeness is broadly inclusive; false politeness narrowly exclusive. …

True politeness has no scornful epithets for classes or races, who, if not organically inferior, have been born under, or environed by inferior conditions. Humanity is God's child, and to fail in true kindness and respect to the least of His "little ones" is to fail in allegiance to Him.

Contemptuous injustice to man is treason to God, and one of the worst forms of infidelity is to praise Christ with our lips and trample on the least of His brethren with our feet,-to talk sweetly of His love, and embitter the lives of others by cold contempt, and cruel scorn.

Beyond the narrow limitations of social lines are humanity's broader interests…

If today you believe that your faith is simple and vision clearer than that of other forms of belief, should not the clasp of your hand be warmer, the earnestness of your soul greater, and the throbbings of your heart quicker to clasp the world in your arms and bring it nearer to the great heart of God and His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ?

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was not only a lady but a radical.  In a letter to John Brown she wrote, “I thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race.” She also promised him that she would assist his wife and there is evidence that she did.”

Letters have been unearthed which prove she was also involved with the underground railroad. It is known that she gave money to these efforts and aspired to be more involved. However, while her activity in harboring fugitive slaves and helping them along is suspected this activity had not been proven. It is also know that she stood up to those who would seek to dehumanize her. On more than one occasion she refused to give up her place on a railroad car and move to the car for “her kind”. She also took part in and advocated for what was called the Free Produce movement. This meant a boycott of products which would have been produced by slave labor. She writes of this stance in her poem Free Labor. (p81)

Free Labor

I wear an easy garment,
O'er it no toiling slave
Wept tears of hopeless anguish,
In his passage to the grave.

And from its' ample folds
Shall rise no cry to God,
Upon its warp and woof shall be
No stain of tears and blood.

Oh, lightly shall it press my form,
Unladened with a sigh,
Shall not 'mid its rustling hear,
 Some sad despairing cry.

This fabric is too light to bear
the weight of bondsmen's tears,
I shall not in its texture trace
the agony of years.

Too light to bear a smother'd sigh,
From some lorn woman's heart,
Whose only wreath of household love
Is rudely torn apart.

Then lightly shall it press my form,
Uburden'd by a sigh;
from its seams and folds shall rise,
No voice to pierce the sky,

And witness at the throne of God,
In language deep and strong,
That I have nerv'd Oppression's hand,
For deeds of guilt and wrong.

Early in her life much of her writing focused on abolition but that was not her only cause. Harper wrote and spoke tirelessly on gender equality, temperance, and Christian reform. She spoke to both black and white audiences calling them to lives of integrity and meaning.

We can hear this message loud and clear in her poem Be Active(p76).

Be Active

Onward, onward, sons of freedom,
In the great and glorious strife;
You've a high and holy mission
On the battle field of life.

See oppression's feet of iron
Grind a brother to the ground
And from bleeding heart and bosom,
Gapeth many a fearful wound.

Sit not down with idle pity,
Gazing on his mighty wrong;
Hurl the bloated tyrant from him-
Say my brother, oh, be strong!

See that sad, despairing mother
Clasp her burning brow in pain;
Lay your hand upon her fetters-
Rend, oh! rend her galling chain!

Here's a pale and trembling maiden,
Brutal arms around her thrown;
Christian father, save, ohl save her,
By the love you bear your own!

Yearly lay a hundred thousand
New-born babes on Moloch's shrine;
Crush these gory, reeking altars-
Christians, let this work be thine.

Where the Southern roses blossom,
Weary lives go out in pain;
Dragging to death's shadowy portals,
Slavery's heavy galling chain,

Men of every clime and nation,
Every faith, and sect, and creed,
Lay aside your idle jangling,
Come and staunch the wounds that bleed.

On my people's blighted bosom,
Mountain weights of sorrow lay;
Stop not now to ask the question,
Who shall roll the stone away?

Set to work the moral forces,
That are yours of church and state;
Teach them how to war and battle
'Gainst oppression, wrong, and hate.

Oh! be faithful! Oh! be valiant,
Trusting not in human might;
Know that in the darkest conflict,
God is on the side of right!

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper heard in the Christian Gospel a call to action and lived her life in service to that call. She challenged the understandings of her day and took many personal risks, using both her written words and her public speaking to encourage others to to take action.

Her short story Two Offers was the first short story to be published by an African American. It tells the story of two cousins and the paths their lives had taken. One sought marriage for safety and the other who had been brought up in poverty went on to achieve an important place as a writer. At the end of the story this second woman gets up from the deathbed of her cousin who had chosen safety and a conventional life and rededicates herself to the path she had chosen. Listen now as she speaks for in these words we hear Ms. Harper speaking of herself and the life she chose to live and the meaning she found there.

Two Offers (p114)

Her cousin turned from that death bed a sadder and wiser woman. She resolved more earnestly than ever to make the world better by her example, gladder by her presence, and to kindle the fires of her genius on the altars of universal love and truth. She had a higher and better object in all her writings than the mere acquisition of gold, or acquirement of fame. She felt that she had a high and holy mission on the battle-field of existence, that life was not given her to be frittered away in nonsense, or wasted away in trifling pursuits. She would willingly espouse an unpopular cause but not an unrighteous one.

In her the down-trodden slave found an earnest advocate; the flying fugitive remembered her kindness as he stepped cautiously through our Republic, to gain his freedom in a monarchial land, having broken the chains on which the rust of centuries had gathered. Little children learned to name her with affection, the poor called her blessed, as she broke her bread to the pale lips of hunger. Her life was like a beautiful story, only it was clothed with the dignity of reality and invested with the sublimity of truth.

True, she was an old maid, no husband brightened her life with his love, or shaded it with his neglect. No children nestling lovingly in her arms called her mother. No one appended Mrs. to her name; she was indeed an old maid, not vainly striving to keep up an appearance of girlishness, when departed was written on her youth. Not vainly pining at her loneliness and isolation: the world was full of warm, loving hearts, and her own beat in unison with them.

Neither was she always sentimentally sighing for something to love, objects of affection were all around her, and the world was not so wealthy in love that it had no use for hers; in blessing others she made a life and benediction, and as old age descended peacefully and gently upon her, she had learned one of life's most precious lessons, that true happiness consists not so much in the fruition of our wishes as in the regulation of desires and the full development and right culture of our whole natures.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a Unitarian who heard the call to audacity of which I spoke last week. And when she came to the end of her life She knew it had been a good and meaningful life.

This morning I pray that we each find a way to answer that which calls to us. May that which is good and right and true lure us on And at the end of our days may we too know the satisfaction of having lived a meaningful life.

Amen and may it be so.

The historical content as well as FEW Harper’s poems and prose were taken from “A Brighter Coming Day” a compendium of the works of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, edited by Frances Smith Foster, The Feminist Press, 1990.