Frances Ellen Watkins Harper deployed her artistry with words as a weapon to dismantle slavery. Born to free African American parents in Baltimore, Harper actively took up the abolitionist cause, and championed the cause of itinerant farm women throughout the South. Harper was a passionate voice for Black women’s suffrage. Believed to be the first Black woman to publish a novel, she was a prolific essayist, poet and novelist. During Reconstruction, she continued her activism and was an honorary founding member of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.
Poems
LET THE LIGHT ENTER
The Dying Words of Goethe “Light! more light!
the shadows deepen, And my life is ebbing low,
Throw the windows widely open: Light! more light! before I go.
