Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a strong supporter of abolitionism, prohibition and woman's suffrage, progressive causes that were connected before and after the American Civil War.[24] She was also active in the Unitarian Church, which supported abolitionism. Harper wrote to John Brown after he had been arrested and before his execution: "I thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race; I hope from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom."[28]
In 1853, Watkins joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and became a traveling lecturer for the group. She delivered many speeches during this time and faced much prejudice and discrimination along the way.[29] In 1854, Watkins delivered her first anti-slavery speech called "The Elevation and Education of Our People."[2] The success of this speech resulted in a lecture tour in Maine for the Anti-Slavery Society.[2] She recalled New England warmly: "Dear old New England! It was there kindness encompassed my path; it was there kind voices made their music in my ear. The home of my childhood, the burial-place of my kindred, is not as dear to me as New England."[30] She continued to travel, lecturing throughout the East, the Midwest, and Canada from 1856 to 1860.[2] Of Pennsylvania's treatment of African American people, Harper stated: "Now let me tell you about Pennsylvania. I have been traveling nearly four years, and have been in every New England State, in New York, Canada, and Ohio; but of all these places, this is about the meanest of all."[30]
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Harper moved South to teach newly freed Black people during the Reconstruction Era. During this time she also gave many large public speeches. In 1870, Harper worked with the Freedmen's Bureau encouraging many freedmen in Mobile, Alabama, to "get land, everyone that can" so they could vote and act independently once Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment.[24]
Harper was active in the growing number of Black organizations and came to believe that Black reformers had to be able to set their own priorities. From 1883 to 1890, she helped organize events and programs for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She had worked with members of the original WCTU, because "it was the most important women's organization to push for expanding federal power."[31] In her role as superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania WCTU, Harper facilitated both access and independent organizing for Black women, promoting the collective action of all women as a matter of both justice and morality.[32] "Activists like Harper and Frances Willard campaigned not only for racial and sexual equality but also for a new understanding of the federal government's responsibility to protect rights, regulate morality, and promote social welfare".[31] Harper was disappointed, however, when Willard gave priority to white women's concerns, rather than supporting Black women's goals of gaining federal support for an anti-lynching law, defense of Black rights, or abolition of the convict lease system.[31]
Harper's public activism also continued in later years. In 1891, Harper delivered a speech to the National Council of Women of America in Washington D.C., demanding justice and equal protection by the law for the African American people.[33] In her speech, she stated:
"As long as there are such cases as moral irresponsibility, mental imbecility; as long as Potiphar's wife stands in the world's pillory of shame, no man should be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law. A government which has power to tax a man in peace, and draft him in war, should have power to defend his life in the hour of peril. A government which can protect and defend its citizens from wrong and outrage and does not is vicious. A government which would do it and cannot is weak; and where human life is insecure through either weakness or viciousness in the administration of law, there must be a lack of justice, and where this is wanting nothing can make up the deficiency."[33]
