Frances E. W. Harper - Journey Through Blackness

“We want more soul, a higher cultivation of all spiritual faculties. We need more unselfishness, earnestness, and integrity. We need men and women whose hearts are the homes of high and lofty enthusiasm and a noble devotion to the cause of emancipation, who are ready and willing to lay time, talent, and money on the altar of universal freedom.” --Frances E.W. Harper, The Anglo-African Magazine, 1859 

#journeythroughblackness

Echoing the truth

Across centuries that we

Are "bound together."

Frances E.W. Harper

(b. September 25, 1825 - d. February 22, 1911)

Abolitionist, feminist, poet, essayist, and novelist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was the author of the first short story published by an African American. “The Two Offers” was published in 1859 in the Anglo-African. Just click on the links below to read the short story, as well as important poems and essays by Harper.

“The Two Offers” (1859)

Poems by Frances E.W. Harper

“The Slave Mother” (1854)

“The Slave Auction” (1854)

“Bury Me in a Free Land” (1864)

Speeches by Frances E.W. Harper

“We Are All Bound Up Together” (1866)

“The Great Problem to be Solved” (1875)

“A Heritage of Scorn” (1891)

“Then and Now” (1900)