Saint Louis University African American Review Indiana State University African American Women's Poetry in the "Christian Recorder", 1855-1865: A Bio-Bibliography with Sample Poems Author(s): Eric Gardner Source: African American Review, Vol. 40, No. 4, The Curse of Caste (Winter, 2006), pp. 813-831 Published by: African American Review (St. Louis University) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40033755 Accessed: 17-02-2016 15:03 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Saint Louis University, African American Review, Indiana State University and African American Review (St. Louis University) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African American Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 76.77.170.243 on Wed, 17 Feb 2016 15:03:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions African American Women's Poetry in the Christian Recorder,1855-1865: A Bio-Bibliography with Sample Poems the work of several early AfricanAmerican women who collectionshas been poets published book-length Eric Gardner is the editor of recoveredby literaryhistorians (Joan Sherman pre-eminent an of Blackwomen anthology early among them), many pre-20th-century who pub- American plays on race, lished occasionalpoetry in periodicalsremain ignored or simply Major Voices: The Drama of unknown. If FrancesSmith Foster'scrucial discovery of the serial- Slavery (Toby 2005), and ized novels of FrancesEllen WatkinsHarper did not already do author of articles on Harriet so, Mitch Kachun'sstunning identificationof JuliaC. Collins's Wilson, Lucy Delaney, Frank serialized ChristianRecorder novel The Curse of Caste (1865) should J.Webb, Mary Webb, and push us beyond the covers of physical books in our search for a Chloe Russel, among others. fuller sense of Blackwomen's and so cause us to He chairs the English early writing at question our assumptions about early AfricanAmerican literary Department Saginaw culture. as scholarslike Fosterand Kachunhave Valley State University. Because, shown, Professor Gardner thanks Black-operatedperiodicals often offered key conduits between Jodie Mitch Blackauthors and Blackreaders- and sometimes even encour- Gardner, Kachun, Joycelyn Moody, Aileen aged those readersto become writers themselves-a full-scale Keenan, Veta Tucker, and the canvassing,cataloging, and analysis of literarywork in early staff of the SVSU Libraryfor Blackperiodicals that is both more accessibleand more integrated their aid. into our researchand classroomsthan the BlackPeriodical LiteratureProject remains desperatelyneeded. This study offers a small piece of such bibliographicaland historicalresearch: it introduces35 Blackwomen who published poetry in the ChristianRecorder between 1855 and 1865,a decade that culminatedin the Recorder'spublication of Collins's novel (and, more broadly, the conclusion of the Civil War).Specifically, it provides a set of sample poems from this group, basic bio- graphicaldata on 26 Recorderpoets who were AfricanAmerican women, and more limited informationon nine others who pub- lished poems in the Recorderand who either self-identifiedas or probablywere AfricanAmerican. Three of these 35- Harper, Mary Ann Shadd Cary,and Susan Paul Vashon- were well- known activists.The others- most of whom published only a poem or two in the Recorder(and a few of whom wrote in groups to createsingle published poems)- representwhat might have been a largergroup of antebellumAfrican American women who wrote occasionally,used literatureto help themselves through daily life, did not aspire to professionalpoethood, and have been almost totally ignored in our history. Notable patternsemerge from what we know of these wom- en's lives. Almost all, it seems, were active readersof the Christian Recorder;some even donated to the Recorder'son-going fundrais- ing campaignsin the post-war period. This involvement, of course, marks their ties to the AME Church,but it also speaks to their geographicallocation, their class status, and their education. Theirresidences- mostly in Pennsylvania(especially Philadel- phia) and New Jersey,but also in areas like Buffalo,New York, African American Review, Volume 40, Number 4 © 2006 Eric Gardner 813 This content downloaded from 76.77.170.243 on Wed, 17 Feb 2016 15:03:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions where sometime-Recorderwriter and other;in addition to their shared time AME stalwartDaniel Payne was at the Institute,for example, the bond active- give us a sense of the regional between Johnsonand Daffin was circulationof the Recorder.Most were strong enough that Johnsonand her clearly of the middling classes:their pupils raised money to help support fathersand spouses were often profes- Daffin's work educating newly freed sionals and/or shop owners (a minister, slaves in Virginia.But the largercom- a grocer,barbers, shoemakers, a baker, munity that these women shared went a wnitewasner, beyond demo- and so on). These poets represent an even graphicsand Many of the personal rela- women worked larger community of (now tionships;it cen- outside of their ignored) early Black women who tered on arguing homes - gener- for radical ally as domes- wrote occasional poems not to change in the tics, laundresses, gain professional poethood (white) public and dressmak- sphere's concep- ers-in part but to endure daily life tion of Black because of the as well as to challenge whites' personhood, fragility of the racialuplift Black middle perceptions of Black personhood. through educa- class in the ante- tion and reli- bellum North. At least one, Esther gion, and the centralityof textual pro- Palmer,owned her own trimmings duction to those processes. Indeed, as business. At least three- Vashon, poet Hester A. B. Jay wrote in a letter SarahDaffin, and EstellenaJohnson- to the editor of the Recorderpublished were teachers;Daffin made important in the November 22, 1862issue, these contributionsas one of the early Black writers demonstratedthat "ourpeople, teachersof freedpeople.Daffin and who, for many years, have been Johnsoncame to teaching through ground down to the earthby the iron shared learning:both were graduates heel of affliction,"should not be of Institutefor Colored Philadelphia's "ashamednor afraidto come up and Youth. Cary and Harper,of course, let their enemies know that are a were active as writers and they speakers; people that are not brutes;but men and Cary also did importanteditorial work. intellects as well as Daffin and Lizzie Hart also wrote women, possessing fairly themselves."Jay's letter, which opens extensively- in the form of letters to with the of her of the the Recorder.Four others- Daffin, Ellen sharing discovery Recorder(told in the language of an Johnson,Estellena Johnson, and that Angeline Demby- left a record of pub- epiphany), implicitly suggested lic lectures or At least texts were the centraltool in letting readings. two, those "enemies"know- and in EllenJohnson and H. MarthaJohnson, were affiliatedwith a local reminding friends- of the powers of literary Blackminds and hearts. society. All were, of course, highly lit- erate;even the verse that seem All of the sample poems included might below- I would all of the exceedingly conventional- perhaps and, argue even contrived- to contemporary poems by Blackwomen that were pub- readersdemonstrates a clear sense of lished in the Recorder-speak to Jay's trends in Americanand Britishpoetry argument.In part because most of in terms of metrics,rhyme, tone, and these poets seem to have published content. only occasionally,many of the poems Connectionssuch as these- as well are consonantin tone, tropes, and as the Recorder'sfunction as the main approacheswith the sentimentaland AME organ of the period- suggest that didactic poems by mid-19th-century these women were already part of a white poets (for example, Lydia community.Some clearly knew each Sigourney);many also centeron key 814 AFRICANAMERICAN REVIEW This content downloaded from 76.77.170.243 on Wed, 17 Feb 2016 15:03:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions events in domestic life. Still, the exam- poets see publicationas a logical step ples I have selected demonstrateboth in a largerset of domestic actions.Both the range of approachesand the gener- the sense of domestic immediacy in ic spectrumof early Blackwomen's many of the Recorderpoems and the poetry in the ChristianRecorder. Thus, direct discussion of politics in others Hannah Myers's touching elegy to her complicatethe trajectoryembodied in daughterLilia and EmmaTates's poem the title of Loeffelholz'slandmark on her brother'sdeath (both illustrative study, From School to Salon: Reading of the massive number of elegies Nineteenth-CenturyAmerican Women's among these poems) are presented not Poetry.Future critics will also need to only next to Ellen Nixon's striking confrontthe ways in which the poems untitled poem and Belle Goode's "The of daily life common in the Recorder Anxious Young Pious Mother"- which might seem apoliticaleven as they centeron questions of faith and gen- implicitly took part in the largerpoliti-