Activism techniques
Frances Harper's activism took an intersectional approach, which combined her campaign for African American civil rights with her advocacy for women's rights.[34] One of Harper's major concerns regarded the brutal treatment Black women—including Harper herself—encountered on public transportation, and this matter foregrounded her advocacy for women's suffrage.[35] In the 1860s and beyond, Harper delivered various speeches pertaining to women's issues and more specifically, Black women's issues.[36][34] One of her speeches, "We Are All Bound Up Together," delivered in 1866 at the National Woman's Rights Convention in New York City, demanded equal rights for all, emphasizing the need to raise awareness for African American suffrage while also advocating for women's suffrage.[4] In her speech, she stated:
"We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You tried that in the case of the Negro...You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man's hand against me...While there exists this brutal element in society which tramples upon the feeble and treads down the weak, I tell you that if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America."[37]
After Harper delivered this speech, the National Woman's Rights Convention agreed to form the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), which incorporated African American suffrage into the Women's Suffrage Movement.[4] Harper served as a member of AERA's Finance Committee, though Black women comprised only five of the organization's fifty-plus officers and speakers.[35][38] AERA was short-lived, ending when Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which would grant African American men the right to vote.[35] Some of AERA's suffragists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, did not support the Amendment's aim to enfranchise Black men without extending suffrage rights to women.[32] Harper, on the other hand, supported the Fifteenth Amendment, and endorsed the Amendment at AERA's final meeting.[35] Shortly afterward, AERA divided into two separate movements: the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which did not support the Amendment, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported the Amendment.[4] Neither organization fully promoted the rights of Black women.[35] As a proponent of the Fifteenth Amendment, Harper helped found the AWSA.[4] After all, Harper did not want to undermine the progress of Black men by choosing to fight for women's suffrage over African American suffrage.[39] Harper did, however, support the proposed Sixteenth Amendment, which would have granted women the right to vote.[39] After the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Harper also encouraged formerly enslaved people to vote.[35]
In addition to delivering speeches, Harper also promoted her intersectional suffrage advocacy in later years by helping found the National Association for Colored Women (NACW) in 1896.[2] Harper was often the only Black woman at the progressive conferences she attended, which isolated her from the predominantly white reformers.[2] Harper therefore helped organize the NACW to avoid the racism of white progressives.[2] In 1897, Harper became the NACW's vice president and used her platform to advocate for Black women's civil rights.[2]
Suffragism in literature
Various examples of Harper's writing contain themes of suffrage. Her poem, "The Deliverance," published in her 1872 anthology, Sketches of Southern Life, discusses the vote through the lens of fictional Black female narratives during the Reconstruction era. As scholar Elizabeth A. Petrino argues, in "The Deliverance," Harper communicates how "women within the home are the catalysts for political rebellion" and likewise "posits women as moral exemplars and centers of political power within the home."[40] Indeed, during her years of activism, Harper expressed concern regarding how individuals would cast their ballots once granted the right to vote.[35] Harper's "The Deliverance" conveys these sentiments through several vignettes telling how different fictional men exercised their right to vote. Harper writes:
"But when John Thomas Reeder brought
His wife some flour and meat,
And told he had sold his vote
For something good to eat,
You ought to seen Aunt Kitty raise,
And heard her blaze away;
She gave the meat and flour a toss,
And said they should not stay.
And I should think he felt quite cheap
For voting the wrong side;
And when Aunt Kitty scolded him,
He just stood up and cried."[41]
In these particular stanzas, the speaker questions how the voting population will exercise their right to vote. As the character John Thomas Reeder "sold his vote" for food, Aunt Kitty expresses her frustration that not all people—and particularly men, in this instance—fully understand the importance of the vote. Not only does Aunt Kitty, the sole female figure in the text, "toss" the meat and flour, but she also scolds Reeder and makes him cry. While Aunt Kitty has agency in her encounter with Reeder, Reeder has a power of his own in possessing the right to vote. Within "The Deliverance," Harper expresses a desire for Black women to obtain suffrage rights alongside their male counterparts. In addition to "The Deliverance," Harper's poem, "The Fifteenth Amendment," describes in positive terms the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African-American men the right to vote:
"Ring out! ring out! your sweetest chimes,
Ye bells, that call to praise;
Let every heart with gladness thrill,
And songs of joyful triumph raise.
Shake off the dust, O rising race!
Crowned as a brother and a man;
Justice to-day asserts her claim,
And from thy brow fades out the ban.
With freedom's chrism upon thy head,
Her precious ensign in thy hand,
Go place thy once despised name
Amid the noblest of the land"[42]
In these stanzas, Harper includes exclamation points, alongside imagery such as "chimes" of the bells, and a command for the African American people to "shake off the dust." Harper additionally incorporates positive diction, such as the phrases "gladness thrill" and "joyful triumph." Harper also uses regal language to describe the newly enfranchised population. Upon receiving voting rights, Black men are "crowned" and become "amid the noblest of the land," posing a contrast with their "once despised name" that Harper references. In general, the language in "The Fifteenth Amendment" casts the Fifteenth Amendment in a positive light, which aligns with Harper's previous support for the Amendment that led her to help found the American Woman Suffrage Association. Unlike "The Deliverance," however, Harper's "The Fifteenth Amendment" poem does not express a particular yearning for Black women's suffrage.
Frances Harper portrait, The Boston Globe, 1894Alongside her poetry, Harper's prose also presents suffrage activism. Her novel Minnie's Sacrifice, published in 1869—in the same year as the Fifteenth Amendment debates—describes the vote as a defense mechanism for Black women as victims of racial violence in the Reconstruction South.[43]Minnie's Sacrifice also highlights the intersectional struggles faced by Black women. For example, scholar Jen McDaneld Archived 2021-01-26 at the Wayback Machine argues in her analysis of the novel that the need for protection of the law, which the vote could help Black women obtain, is "rooted in both radicalized and gendered injustices that cannot be extricated from one another."[43] Near the end of the novel, Minnie expresses a desire for Black women's suffrage, contending the right of suffrage should not be based upon "service or sex, but on the common base of humanity." Responding to the male character Louis, who believes the nation is "not prepared for" Black women's suffrage, Minnie states:
"I cannot recognize that the negro man is the only one who has pressing claims at this hour. To-day our government needs woman's conscience as well as man's judgment. And while I would not throw a straw in the way of the colored man, even though I know that he would vote against me as soon as he gets his vote, yet I do think that woman should have some power to defend herself from oppression, and equal laws as if she were a man."[44]
Through Minnie's statement, Harper conveys a desire for Black women to achieve suffrage rights in order to defend themselves from oppression. Shortly after making this claim, Minnie is killed—the result of racial violence. Minnie is not protected by the law, and she is a victim of the oppression she protests against in her pro-suffrage rhetoric. In this excerpt, Minnie also shows support for the Black man's vote, stating how she "would not throw a straw in the way of the colored man." At the same time, though, similar to the speaker in "The Deliverance," Minnie additionally expresses uncertainty regarding how these men might cast their ballots. Within Minnie's Sacrifice, Harper communicates a determination for Black women to obtain the right to suffrage.
Scholarship of suffrage
There is little scholarship detailing Frances Harper's involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement.[43] Indeed, Harper does not appear in the History of Woman Suffrage anthology written by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were original members of the NWSA.[43] As scholar Jennifer McDaneld Archived 2021-01-26 at the Wayback Machine argues, the "suffrage split" that created NWSA and AWSA alienated Harper—who appeared to refuse white feminism—from the Women's Suffrage Movement.[43]
