Journal X Volume 6 Number 2 Spring 2002 Article 6 2020 The Poetry and Activism of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Sarah Elizabeth Bennison New York University Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jx Recommended Citation Bennison, Sarah Elizabeth (2020) "The Poetry and Activism of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper," Journal X: Vol. 6 : No. 2 , Article 6. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jx/vol6/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal X by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Bennison: The Poetry and Activism of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper The Poetry and Activism of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Sarah Elizabeth Bennison Sarah Bennison com William Still, in his 1871 publication The Under pleted her Masters in ground Railroad, called his colleague and friend English and Compara Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "the leading colored tive Literature at poet in the United States” (Foster 5). In speaking of his choice to devote thirty pages of The Underground Columbia U in 2001 Railroad to Frances Harper, Still wrote, "There is not and is currently a to be found in any written work portraying the Anti Ph.D. student at New slavery struggle, (except in the form of narratives) as York U we are aware of, any sketch of the labors of any emi nent colored woman.” Despite her exclusion from most accounts of literary history, Frances Harper was the most popular African-American writer of the nineteenth century (Foster 4).