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• 1 2024-07-16T11:14:36-04:00 Poetry by African American Women (1890-1930): A Reader and Guide 19 Open access textbook introducing readers to Poetry by Black Women plain 2024-07-29T14:36:31-04:00 The majority of the text of this Open-Access Reader was written by Amardeep Singh; some sections (labeled as such) were written by Sarah Thompson. Sarah Thompson also gave considerable input regarding the selection of poems and thematic organization. How to Cite. Send us Feedback (Google Forms link)
  
  General Introduction: 
  
  Poetry by African American women is a vital part of the landscape of American literature -- one that is often overlooked in literary history. Between the 1890s and the 1920s, many Black women started publishing poetry, especially in African American magazines like The Crisis and Opportunity. Many authors also published single-authored books of poetry, sometimes using local and regional publishing companies. Many of these poems dealt with social and political issues related to the broader civil rights movement, race and racism, religion, and events in the news. Others were more personal, dealing with questions over motherhood, love and loss, and gender roles. 
  
  In this Reader, we're putting together a selection of compelling poems from this time period, along with biographical information about the authors as well as a sense of the historical context. Our aim is to make the poets and their poetry feel alive to a broad range of readers in the 21st century – not just academic specialists and historians. We believe these ideas and voices are still relevant to us now – from calls for racial justice and protests against discrimination and racialized violence, to queer and feminist themes. 
  
  This Reader is aimed at introductory high school and college classrooms; it is not so much a work of original scholarship as it is a synthesis of the work of scholars like Akasha Gloria Hull, Maureen Honey, Maryemma Graham, and many others (see "Further Reading" for an annotated bibliography). It is designed to be read straight through, though readers can certainly skip to areas and authors of particular interest if they choose using the Chapters and Sections below  We’re breaking the collection into decades, with Chapters for 1890-1899, 1900-1909, 1910-1919, and 1920-1928. In each case, we’ll have a brief general overview of the decade in question, introductions to the major authors, and notes attached where some historical context might be helpful to understand the poems in question. Some of the poets were well-known at the time (especially Frances E.W. Harper and Georgia Douglas Johnson); others were less well-known, so working with these poems might be seen as contributing to a project of recovery. 
• 1 2023-06-26T09:26:45-04:00 Frances E.W. Harper: Author Page 14 Detailed biography of Frances E.W. Harper. Also known as Frances Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper plain 2024-06-25T12:50:50-04:00 The following biography was researched and written by Kate Hennessey in the spring of 2024. Additional edits by Amardeep Singh. 
  
  
  

  Frances E.W. Harper (September 24, 1825- February 22,1911)

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born free in Baltimore, Maryland on September 24, 1825. At three years old, Harper lost both of her parents and went to live with her uncle and aunt, William and Henrietta Watkins. Harper’s uncle, William J. Watkins, Sr. was actively involved in the Abolitionist movement and his home was frequented by many of the leading figures, including William Lloyd Garrison, founder of The Liberator.
  
  The Watkins family were middle-class, and as a child Harper had access to an activist culture and to an education at her uncle’s school, The Watkins Academy for Negro Youth. After receiving a basic vocational education there, 13-year-old Harper was sent to work as a servant for a White family that owned a bookstore. On her breaks, she was allowed to read through the family’s library, giving her even more access to a literary world. In her childhood, Harper had access to a diverse socio-political-cultural milieu that placed her in contact with a burgeoning free Black community, the Abolitionist Movement, but also White enslavers and their enslaved Black people. 

  In her early twenties, Harper published her first volume of poems Forest Leaves (ca. 1849), with a local Baltimore printer; it contains several abolitionist and race-conscious poems she would later reprint and revise, including "Ethiopia" and "Bible Defence of Slavery." In 1851, at age 26, Harper moved to Ohio and was hired as the first woman faculty member at Union Seminary, where she taught sewing. Later, Harper lived in York, Pennsylvania, where she also worked as a teacher.
  
  Harper’s life would soon intensely focus on activism when Maryland passed their Fugitive Slave Act in 1853. This law was aimed at curtailing the free Black community in Baltimore and made it illegal for African Americans to enter the state under threat of enslavement. Thus, Harper, who was born free, could then be enslaved if she were to re-enter her home state. Her growing activist engagement led Harper to move to the home of William and Letitia Still in Philadelphia, which also served as a hub in the Underground Railroad as well as the mainstream Abolitionist Movement in Pennsylvania. In the early 1850s, Harper began to publishing poetry in The Liberator and in the Frederick Douglass Paper in support of the Abolition movement. 

  Harper's next volume of poems, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) became an instant success in 19th century America, where over 10,000 copies would be sold and over 20 editions published. Utz McKnight argues that Harper’s popularity and subject matter makes her the true democratic poet of America. Like her more famous friend and contemporary, Sojourner Truth, Harper began giving a series of traveling lectures for the Maine and Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Societies, where she would sell her poems, recite them live and give political lectures. The two women were the only Black women who would regularly be invited to appear in this way. In her lectures, Harper would also periodically join the stage with Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. 
  
  Harper remained at the forefront of the Abolitionist Movement and continued to write prose and poems through the 1850s. In 1859 she published the first short story by an African American woman, “The Two Offers,” which focused on women’s education. Then, in 1860 Harper married Fenton Harper and had a daughter, Mary (born 1862). They bought land and dairy equipment in Ohio from the money Harper made from her lectures and writing. However, in 1864, Fenton Harper died leaving his wife with three of his previous children and Mary, as well as financial debt. Due to her status as a woman, the bank would not credit her for the debt, and Harper had to return to lecturing to make money. Later in 1864, she returned to Maryland with her daughter, leaving her three step-children with her in-laws. 

  After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Harper began to travel South to help formerly enslaved people recover and begin to understand their new freedom and she lectured to audiences. Now that Emancipation was achieved, Harper was set on educating Black people, so that they begin to achieve material equality in the form of political representation, land, money, and education. Unsurprisingly, Harper became a leader in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and gave the speech “We Are All Bound Up Together” (1866) at the Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention in New York. In this speech, she calls for White and Black women to work together to achieve voting equality, rather than allow racism to tear apart the movement. Unfortunately, this speech would not convince her predominantly White peers at the Women’s Rights Convention and Harper founded the National Association of Colored Women to focus on the specific challenges that African American women faced. She also became involved in the Temperance movement. 
  
  In the Post-Civil War era Harper would continue to publish writing which provided more expansive visions of the future that Harper imagined for both Black and White Americans. In 1869 she published both the poem Moses: A Story of the Nile and the serialized novel Minnie’s Sacrifice. After moving to Philadelphia and buying a home for herself and her daughter Mary, Harper would also publish her collection of poetry Sketches of Southern Life (1891), which dealt with extreme violence and organizing of White supremacist groups that were stunting the political and cultural movements of Black Southerners. We now know this period to be the Jim Crow era. By 1877 Harper published two more novels and her famous novel, Iola Leroy (1892) became one of the most popular novels in the 19th century and continued to work through the most pressing issues facing American society: how to reckon with a country built on slavery and build an equitable future. Frances Harper dedicated her life to working so others could have access to many of the things that she had experienced as a child: freedom, education, improved living conditions and many others. While her novels, especially Iola Leroy, have been studied by scholars, her poetry has been left understudied in the history of the 19th and 20th centuries. In his introduction to Harper’s poetic consciousness, McKnight declares, “Frances Harper was a poet before she became active as a public speaker, and so I think we should consider Frances Harper as a poet who found her muse in the social and political events of her time” (McKnight 23). Her extensive biography, summarized here, provides crucial context to analyzing the constructions of slavery, emancipation, and freedom contained throughout her poetry. Some entry points to her poetry are provided below: 

  Introducing Frances E.W. Harper's Poetry
  
  Harper published Forest Leaves with a local publisher in Baltimore, James Young, probably sometime between 1846-1849 (only one copy of the volume is extant, at the Maryland Historical Society, and it is undated). It is a modest volume, which contains a fair amount of religious poetry, though it does also have poems important to Harper's overall body of work, especially the poem "Ethiopia." 
  
  The second volume of Harper's poetry, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) illustrates Harper’s ardent activism of the moment. This collection of poems seeks to help Americans understand the violence of slavery, especially on family bonds. In poems such as “The Syrophoenician Woman,” “The Slave Mother,” “The Fugitive’s Wife,” and “The Slave Auction” Harper acutely expresses the pain of African American families torn apart from the institution of slavery. These poems ask readers, including White readers, to consider their own children being torn from their sides into the hands of unknown violent men. They would also hit the nerve of devout Christians who should be appalled at the breach of the marriage vow by slavery.
  
  In this way, Harper follows a rhetorical strategy similar to Harriet Beecher Stowe's in her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which Harper acknowledges in her poems “Eliza Harris”. Named after the sympathetic mother figure in Stowe’s novel, Harper's "Eliza Harris" asks readers to consider how a country founded on the ideas of freedom could allow for a young mother to risk her and her child’s life across a frozen river in Ohio just because of her skin color. In this poem, as the novel, Eliza makes it to freedom with her child. 
  
  By contrast, in “The Slave Mother: a Tale of the Ohio,” the young child does not survive (this poem may be an allusion to the tragic story of Margaret Garner, who committed infanticide rather than allow her child to be recaptured into slavery). Told in the first person and the switching to third once the mother makes the same trek across the river as Eliza did, this poem first allows the reader into the perspective of the mother, but then reminds them of their own position by asking “Will ye not, as men and Christians, / On the side of freedom stand?” A year later, Harper published her poem “Bury Me in a Free Land,” which continues to pull the reader into the pain of families torn apart through the transactions of their masters. Crucially, this poem does not ask for a monument to recognize this violence, but to instead abolish the institution of slavery so the speaker may rest in freedom. 

  After the Civil War, Harper continued to advocate for the rights of recently freed African Americans and began to imagine what a truly free America might look like for both Black and White readers. In 1870 she published her long poem, Moses: A Story of the Nile, which focuses on “the capacity for a people to come together through their faith and to overcome obstacles to their salvation” (McKnight 237). Harper returns to the story of Moses in her collection Idylls of the Bible in 1901. This envisioning of overcoming racial injustice across races remains present throughout Harper’s writing career.  The next year, Harper published another edition of her Miscellaneous collection called Poems (1871). In this collection, Harper pays homage to the work of White abolitionists in her poems “Lines to the Hon. Thaddeus Stevens,” “Lines to Charles Sumner,” and “President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Freedom.” Importantly, all these men served in government, and therefore were able to represent the rights of African Americans at a structural level, a fact that Harper is very attuned to in this collection. While Harper acknowledges the violent battle for the freedom of African Americans, she warns that the work for true liberty is far from over. In her poem “Words for the Hour,” Harper calls on Northerners who fought in the Civil War to now  “teach the Freedman how to wield / The ballot in his hand,” emphasizing the importance of voting rights for African Americans.  Her poems “Fifteenth Amendment” and “An Appeal to the American People” also emphasize the sentiment for a general American audience. Harper also calls on the pathos of hope to inspire her readers, as the poems “The Freedom Bell” and “The Change” offer imaginings of what it would feel like to rid the country of hate and live in a truly free nation. 

  Presumably inspired by her travels in the South to help newly freed African Americans and speak to mixed race audiences, Harper published her volume of poetry Sketches of Southern Life in 1891. Twenty years later, the hope for voting rights and political representation of African Americans was slowly losing ground in the face of the Jim Crow South and White violence rampant in the South. This collection is most well-known for the poems following the character Aunt Chloe through her experience of enslavement, gaining freedom, and then building a life in this new-found freedom. Told in first-person narration, the first poem in the collection, “Aunt Chloe,” opens with her children being sold away from Chloe because the master of the estate has died and left behind massive debt. Despite this, another slave helps Aunt Chloe hold out hope for freedom and the return of her son. In “The Deliverance” and “Aunt Chloe’s Politics,” Harper details the experience of slaves learning that they are now free while on the estate of their master’s and the subsequent voting fraud enforced by White Southerners to prevent African American men from voting for their own interests. Importantly, Harper emphasizes the “women radicals” that punished their husbands for selling their votes for meager food and money. Harper also focuses on the hope of the future in “Learning to Read” and “Church Building” in which Aunt Chloe outlines the denial of knowledge by slave owners and her determination to read as a free woman, as well as her ownership of a cabin and a community effort to build a church– all actions that would’ve been punished by death pre-emancipation. Finally, in “The Reunion,” Aunt Chloe gets her happy ending by reconnecting with her now adult son with plans to live out her life in their new cabin. 

  Just a couple years later, Harper published her collections Atlanta Offering: Poems (1895) and then Poems (1896), which extended her earlier collections. These collections continue to focus on the violence that African Americans face in the South, which Harper highlights in “The Martyr of Alabama”, which is accompanied by a newspaper clipping detailing the murder of Tim Thompson by  a White mob. However, in her poems such as “God Bless Our Native Land” and “Home, Sweet Home,”  Harper continues to envision a nation that could heal from the long history of violence. In the 1896 collection, Harper added the poems “Songs for the People,” “Then and Now," and “The Burdens of All”, which continue to emphasize the need for all Americans to work together to build a greater nation. Additionally, Harper maintained her activism for women’s rights and the growing Temperance movement. In “A Little Child Shall Lead Them” and “Nothing and Something” Harper details the ruin of families from the result of drinking. What seems shockingly relevant, in “A Double Standard,” Harper also writes about the unfair judgment that women face compared to then men in their lives. Finally, Harper revises her previous appeal to all Americans to specifically White women in “An Appeal To My Countrywomen,” to question how they can show mercy and empathy to many beings around the world, except for Southern African Americans who need their activism. Harper castigates their complicity by telling them to not weep for these recently freed Americans, but to “weep for your sons who must gather / The crops which their fathers have sown.” Throughout her writing career, Harper provided many imaginings of what it might look like to heal as a nation together, as Americans. Yet, she remained attuned to the violence and dehumanization that White Americans continued to commit, and therefore prevented the nation from truly healing post-Civil War. 

   

  Works Cited:

  • Alexander, Kelly Lee. “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.” National Women’s History. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/frances-ellen-watkins-harper 

  • Ann Allen Shockley. Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide. Boston: G K Hall, 1988. 

  • “Frances Ellen Watkins (Harper)’s Forest Leaves (CA. 1846). Edited by Alex W. Black, Brigette Fielder, and Johanna Ortner. Just Teach: Early African American Print, Fall 2016. https://jtoaa.americanantiquarian.org/welcome-to-just-teach-one-african-american/frances-ellen-watkins-harpers-forest-leaves-introduction/ 

  • Utz McKnight. Frances E.W. Harper. Polity Press, 2021. 

  
   
• 1 2024-07-16T11:32:01-04:00 Chapter 1b: Revisiting American History via Poetry, 1890-1899 6 Chapter 1, Section b of Poetry by African American Women: A Reader and Guide plain 2024-07-23T15:22:18-04:00 Revisiting American History: the Legacy of Slavery, the Indian Wars, and Lynching
  
  
  The 1890s was far from a great time for African American communities in terms of race relations. The peak period for lynchings was during this era, with more than 150 lynchings per year between 1880-1901. Several poems from this period deal with racialized violence; a representative example might be Frances E.W. Harper’s “The Martyr of Alabama” (1895). 
  
  It’s important to remember that despite the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870, Black people generally could not vote in most southern states, as the states created work arounds and various ‘tests’. Segregation was also widespread, with racial separation imposed for public accommodations like hotels and restaurants as well as on trains and buses. 
  
  Schools and colleges were generally segregated – though the Black community aimed to address this by developing a robust network of Black Colleges and Universities (today referred to as HBCUs); these feature prominently in the poetry of this period. Finally, the Black Church was an extremely important part of the Black experience at this time, and many poets were churchgoing people. As a result, theology inspired by social justice and racial justice concepts permeates many of the poems in this collection. 
  
  Frances E.W. Harper (1825-1911) was a poet, novelist, and public speaker who was born free in Maryland in 1825. She was raised by her uncle and aunt, who were active in the Abolitionist movement. As a young adult, she worked often as a teacher in northern states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania. Starting in the early 1850s, she became active as a speaker on the abolitionist speaker circuit through northern states, and the poems she wrote during this period often had a distinctly activist tone, as she often recited them alongside her talks and lectures on the evils of slavery. Two of her best known poems from the 1850s are “Bury Me in a Free Land” and “Ethiopia.” 
  
  After the Civil War, Harper spent several years visiting with newly-emancipated Black communities in the south. Her political activism also changed in certain ways, as she became involved with both the mainstream, predominantly-White feminist movement and the “Temperance” movement that encouraged abstinence from alcohol. However, she continued to also write poems arguing for racial justice; the following poem from the 1890s is one such example. 
  
  Here is a poem by Harper inspired by a real-life incident: 
  
  Frances E.W. Harper, "The Martyr of Alabama" (1895)
  
  [Author's note: The following news item appeared in the newspapers throughout the country, issue of December 27th, 1894:
  
  “Tim Thompson, a little negro boy, was asked to dance for the amusement of some white toughs. He refused, saying he was a church member. One of the men knocked him down with a club and then danced upon his prostrate form. He then shot the boy in the hip. The boy is dead: his murderer is still at large.”]
  
      He lifted up his pleading eyes,
      And scanned each cruel face,
      Where cold and brutal cowardice
      Had left its evil trace.
  
      [...]
  
      A dark-browed boy had drawn anear
      A band of savage men,
      Just as a hapless lamb might stray
      Into a tiger’s den.
  
      Cruel and dull, they saw in him
      For sport an evil chance,
      And then demanded of the child
      To give to them a dance.
  
      “Come dance for us,” the rough men said;
      “I can’t,” the child replied,
      “I cannot for the dear Lord’s sake,
      Who for my sins once died.”
  
      Tho’ they were strong and he was weak,
      He wouldn’t his Lord deny.
      His life lay in their cruel hands,
      But he for Christ could die.
  
      Heard they aright? Did that brave child
      Their mandates dare resist?
      Did he against their stern commands
      Have courage to resist?
  
      Then recklessly a man arose,
      And dealt a fearful blow.
      He crushed the portals of that life,
      And laid the brave child low.
  
      And trampled on his prostrate form,
      As on a broken toy;
      Then danced with careless, brutal feet,
      Upon the murdered boy.
  
  [The text above is just an excerpt. To read the entire poem, click here]
  
  Incidentally, internet searches do confirm this newspaper clipping involving a child named Tim Thompson in 1894. However, it appears to be just a clipping – we have been unable to learn more about the incident involving the murder of Tim Thompson in Alabama in December of 1894. It’s quite possible it was never seriously investigated by authorities at the time. So the poem may be our best and only account of the ‘real’ story of what happened that day. 
  
  In general, the poem represents an important part of Harper’s method as a poet – she was inspired by current events, and used her poetry to narrate her perspective on them. Sometimes the events were ‘big’ stories, like the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. But sometimes she focused on the sufferings of individual people, often using them as a symbol of a larger pattern of injustice. An example from the 1850s might be the story of Margaret Garner, which Harper turned into verse form in “The Slave Mother: A Tale of the Ohio” (1857). For Harper, that incident revealed the deep inhumanity of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1853, which meant that even people who had escaped from slavery into free states would be sent back to enslavement by force. 
  
  The poem here, “The Martyr of Alabama,” highlights the apparent failure of a predominantly Christian nation to actually adhere to the foundational values of Christianity. 
  
  Native American Themes.
  
  Alongside concerns for injustice as experienced by Black folks, many African American poets of the late 19th century were acutely aware of the ongoing genocidal war against Native American peoples, which by the 1890s was in its final stages. The widespread sympathy many Black communities felt for indigenous people was complicated somewhat by the fact that some of the military units employed by the U.S. government to subdue or eliminate Native American resistance were actually predominantly Black units (most famously, the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’). While many Black poets condemned violence against Native Americans, others celebrated the military achievements of predominantly Black soldiers in the Indian Wars as well as in the Spanish American War (1898-1900). 
  
  An example of a poem expressing strong sympathy for the Native American plight might be Mary Weston Fordham’s “The Cherokee” (1897):
  
  Mary Weston Fordham, “The Cherokee” (1897)
  
      ‘Twas a cloudless morn and the sun shone bright, 
           And dewdrops sparkled clear; 
      And the hills and the vales of this Western land 
           Were wreathed with garlands rare. 
      For verdant spring with her emerald robe 
           Had decked the forest trees; 
      Whilst e'er and anon the vine-clad boughs 
           Waved in the playful breeze. 
  
      All, all was still, not a sound was heard, 
           Save the music of each tree, 
      As gracefully it bent and bowed 
           Its branches o'er the lea. 
      But hark! a sound, 'tis the Red man’s tread, 
           Breaks on the silent air; 
      And a sturdy warrior issues forth, 
           Robed in his native gear. 
  
      And wandering on, he neared the brook; 
           Then sat him down to rest; 
      'Twas a noble sight—that warrior free— 
           That Monarch of the West. 
      He gazed around. O! a wistful gaze 
           Saddened his upturned brow, 
      As he thought of those he'd fondly loved,
           Of those now laid so low. 
  
      He mused aloud “Great Spirit!” list 
           To the Indian's earnest plea; 
      And tell me why, from his own loved home, 
           Must the Indian driven be. 
      When the "Pale Face" came to our genial clime, 
           We wondered and were glad; 
      Then hied us to our chieftain's lodge,
           Our noble “Flying Cloud.” 
  
      We told him all, and he calmly said 
           He'd gladly give them place; 
      And if friends they proved, perchance, extend 
           The calumet of peace. 
      But soon, alas! the dread truth rang 
           That the Pale Face was our foe; 
      For he made our warriors bite the dust—
           Our children lie so low. 
  
      So now, my own, dear, sunny land, 
           Each, woodland and each dell,
      Once the Indian's home, now the Indian's grave, 
           I bid a last farewell. 
      To the “Great Spirit's" hunting-ground, 
           To meet my long-lost bride,
      My "Raven Wing" I gladly hie— 
           He said, then calmly died. 
  
  [Note a “Calumet” is a North American peace pipe]
  
  This poem might be a little confusing at first, since Fordham shifts between third-person narration (the encounter with the Cherokee warrior), and a first-person account in the warrior’s own voice. The core of the poem might be the fourth and fifth stanzas in the warrior’s voice – as he recounts the arrival of the “Pale Face” (Europeans), and the betrayal of peace treaties that led to the displacement of many indigenous tribes, and in some cases genocidal wars that decimated Native American populations. The Cherokee in particular suffered a painful “Removal” process in 1838-1839 that is often described as the “Trail of Tears.” 
  
  
  Finally, Olivia Ward Bush-Banks has a poem about a man of mixed African and Native American ancestry named Crispus Attucks, who played an important role in the American revolution. 
  
  Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, "Crispus Attucks" (1899)
  
      The Nation's heart beat wildly,
        And keenly felt the coming strife;
      The Country's call was sounding
        Brave men must offer life for life.
  
      So long Great Britain's power
        Had sternly held unyielding sway,
      The people yearned for freedom
        And cried, "Our blood must pave the way."
  
      So, on the streets of Boston,
        Where madly rushed the British foe;
      Men questioned with each other,
        "Who shall be first to strike the blow?"
  
      Not that they shrank from duty,
        Ah, no! their lives they gladly gave;
      But War, with all its terrors,
        Brings fear to hearts both true and brave.
  
      But one, with fearless courage,
        Inspired them to activity,
      And boldly led them forward
        With cheering shout, "For Liberty!" *
  
      In face of death and danger,
        He met the foe, this soldier true,
      Till, charging full upon them,
        Their bayonets had pierced him through.
  
      He fell, and o'er the pavement
        A Negro's blood was flowing free.
      His sable hand was foremost
        To strike the blow for liberty.
  
      It was a deed most valiant,
        And mighty was the work begun,
      For War then waging fiercely,
        Ceased not till victory was won.
  
      Naught but a slave was Attucks,
        And yet how grand a hero, too.
      He gave a life for freedom,
        What more could royal sovereign do?
  
      Well may we eulogize him!
        And rear a monument of fame.
      We hold his memory sacred;
        We honor and revere his name.
  
      A century has vanished,
        Yet, through the years still rolling on
      We emulate his bravery
        And praise the deed he nobly done.
  
      Then write in glowing letters
        These thrilling words in history,–
      That Attucks was a hero,
        That Attucks died for Liberty.
  
  One note: in the original printing we have looked at, line 21 of the poem (“With cheering shout, ‘For liberty!’”) ends with a question mark. It is also a question mark in various digital editions that are available online, such as the U-Penn digital edition. We believe the poet must have intended it to be an exclamation, and have rendered it that way here.
  
  The Crispus Attucks described in this poem is a real person, probably of mixed African and Native American descent. He was the first person killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770, and is also thought to have been the first American killed in the Revolutionary War. In contrast to the way he’s portrayed by Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, there is some historical debate as to whether Attucks was actually enslaved at the time he was killed (he may also have been a runaway slave). 
  
  The fact that Attucks was also of Native American ancestry – though this is not mentioned by Bush-Banks – gives an added resonance to her claim “That Attucks was a hero, / That Attucks died for Liberty.” 
   
• 1 2024-07-16T11:17:43-04:00 Chapter 1: 1890-1899. Introduction 4 Chapter 1 of Poetry by African American Women: A Reader and Guide. plain 2024-07-23T09:07:01-04:00 CHAPTER 1: 1890-1899: 
  
  Introduction to this Decade: 
  
  General Historical Context: While in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War there were impressive gains for Black folks around the U.S. (especially reflected in the passage of the 13th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. constitution), that progress slowed after the end of the Reconstruction. The 1890s was a tough time for African American civil rights. In the U.S. south, it was the period during which Jim Crow segregation was on the rise, officially sanctioned by the Supreme Court with the notorious Plessy vs. Ferguson decision of 1896 (which ruled that segregation by race in public accommodations was legal as long as facilities were equal). It was also a period of widespread racialized violence, with an average of 186 lynchings per year. Some of these lynchings were not incidental middle-of-the-night mob attacks but planned spectacles, where thousands of people would gather to watch a Black person tortured and killed. Journalists and activists like Ida B. Wells-Burnett tried to raise awareness of the barbarity of this violence, but it was difficult going. (For more on the 1890s, a good summary of the decade is here)
  
  
  All that said, partly as a result of segregation, during this period African American schools and colleges and universities were growing rapidly, and institutions like the Tuskegee Institute (under the leadership of Booker T. Washington), Atlanta University, Howard University, Lincoln University, and many others, were growing and educating thousands of Black middle class people. These HBCUs would also become important starting points for many African American writers. Overall African American literacy was on the rise, from approximately a 70% illiteracy rate in 1880 to 44.5% by 1900. 
  
  For literary historians, the 1890s are usually talked about as the decade of Paul Laurence Dunbar – he published several collections of poetry during the period that were highly successful (especially Lyrics of Lowly Life), and he was in high demand for readings and performances. He also had crossover appeal with white audiences, though that would later be proven controversial since part of that crossover success was his use of AAVE dialect in many of his poems. 
  
  Unfortunately, the singular emphasis on Dunbar means that the contributions of many other important poets of the period are often overlooked, especially contributions by women. Frances E.W. Harper, whose career had already spanned four decades, published three lively and engaged collections of poetry during this decade. Also active were Josephine Heard, Mary Weston Fordham, Gertrude Mossell, Eloise A. Bibb, H. Cordelia Ray, and Olivia Ward Bush-Banks. 
  
  A particularly helpful book published in the 1890s is Gertrude Mossell’s The Work of the Afro-American Woman (1894). Mossell’s book contains several essays as well as her own original poems, some of which are quite memorable. The book also contains an essay called “The Afro-American Woman in Verse,” which is a survey of poetry by African American women up through the time of publication. Alongside some of the names mentioned above, she includes long extracts and sometimes complete poems by writers who today are more obscure, including M.E. Lambert and Mary Ashe Lee. Mary Ashe Lee’s writings seem particularly noteworthy, including a poem called “Tawawa” that honors the indigenous people who inhabited the land on which an HBCU (Wilberforce University) would be built. Her “Afmerica” is also a powerful and memorable statement. 
  
  The themes poets focused on in the 1890s speak to the lives and conditions that prevailed at that time. Given the prevalence of institutionalized racism and Jim Crow segregation, many poets are deeply invested in activism and advocacy for the Black community. We mark these poems as focused on “Progress and Racial Uplift.” Alongside poems on this theme are poems dealing with the historical legacy of slavery, race relations, and lynching. A small subset of poems from this period express feminist sensibilities in a forthright manner, the most memorable of which might be Frances E.W. Harper’s “A Double Standard.” 
  
  Finally, we’ll also include a section exploring poetry that is more personal, including religious retellings as well as occasional poetry tied to holidays and the changing of the seasons.