The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

by Various

  Streitmatter, Rodger. Raising Her Voice: African-American Women Journalists Who Changed History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.

  Sumler-Lewis, Janice. “The Forten-Purvis Women of Philadelphia and the American Anti-Slavery Crusade.” The Journal of Negro History 66, no. 4 (Winter 1981–1982): 281–288.

  Tate, Claudia, ed. The Works of Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

  Wade-Gayles, Gloria. “Black Women Journalists in the South, 1880–1905: An Approach to the Study of Black Women’s History.” Callaloo, no. 11–13 (February–October 1981): 138–152.

  Wallinger, Hanna. Pauline E. Hopkins: A Literary Biography. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

  Waters, Kristin, and Carol B. Conaway, eds. Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds. Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2007.

  Welburn, Ron. Hartford’s Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.

  White, E. Frances. Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.

  Williams, Fannie Barrier. The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, 1893–1918. Edited by Mary Jo Deegan. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002.

  Williams, Susan S. Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, 1850–1900. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

  Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Richard J. Ellis. New York: Vintage, 2011.

  Yee, Shirley J. Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828–1860. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

  ———. “Finding a Place: Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Dilemmas of Black Migration to Canada, 1850–1870.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 18, no. 3 (1997): 1–16.

  Yellin, Jean Fagan. Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

  Zackodnik, Teresa. Press, Platform, Pulpit: Black Feminist Publics in the Era of Reform. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011.

  ———, ed. “We Must Be Up and Doing”: A Reader in Early African American Feminisms. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2010.

  PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF ABOLITION AND FREEDOM

  1

  ANONYMOUS

  (no date)

  This anthology begins here, with an address by an anonymous speaker published in William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator, to offer a sense of scope to the social and political movements behind the work in this anthology. For every woman featured in the following chapters who has been identified and recognized, there are many who are left unrecorded. This address, by a black woman to black women, insists: “We rise or fall together.” Each singular, spectacular author whose work is presented here emerges out of social movements that demanded that black American women play a critical role in national politics.

  “Address to the Female Literary Association of Philadelphia, on Their First Anniversary: By a Member” (1832)

  SOURCE: “Address to the Female Literary Association of Philadelphia, on Their First Anniversary: By a Member,” Liberator, October 13, 1832.

  My Friends—One year has now elapsed since the formation of this association; a year filled with the most interesting events, in which friends have augmented, and the most gratifying and astonishing progress been made in intellectual improvement and in the virtues of the heart. A year fraught with blessings; for while a malignant disorder has stalked through our city, tearing asunder the most tender ties, leaving children orphans and parents childless, it has not (except in a few instances) been allowed to enter our dwellings, and in no instance has death ensued, and though neighbors and friends have fallen around us, like the chilling blasts of autumn, we have been preserved. Does not gratitude for these important blessings demand renewed exertion as our part to strict performance of duty? do not the numerous instances of sudden death we have witnessed loudly proclaim, “Be ye also ready”?

  To continue this association will be one way of showing our gratitude and of aiding the cause. I presume none of you doubt this; if there is one here so skeptical, I would repeat to her a remark made by our unflinching advocate—Every effort you make in this way, said he, helps to unbind the fetters of the slave; and if she still doubts, I would tell her that as the free people of color become virtuous and intelligent, the character and condition of the slave will also improve. I would bid her, if she wishes the enfranchisement of her sisters, to sympathize in their woes, to rehearse their wrongs to her friends on every occasion, always remembering that our interests are one, that we rise or fall together, and that we can never be elevated to our proper standing while they are in bondage. Too long has it been the policy of our enemies to persuade us that we are a superior race to the slaves, and that our superiority is owing to a mixture with the whites. Away with this idea, cast it from you with the indignation it deserves, and dare to assert that the black man is equal by nature with the white, and that slavery and not his color has debased him. Yet dare to tell our enemies, that with the powerful weapons of religion and education, we will do battle with the host of prejudice which surround us, satisfied that in the end we shall be more than conquerors. My sisters, let me exhort you then to perseverance, by it great things have been effected; indeed, there are few things which perseverance, joined to a sense of duty may not accomplish. By perseverance the great Demosthenes was enabled to overcome a natural defect in his pronunciation, so great, that on his first attempt to speak in public, he was hissed: to rid himself of it, he built a vault where he might practice without disturbance. His efforts were crowned with the most brilliant success, he became the first orator of the age, and his eloquence was more dreaded by Philip than all the fleets and armies of Athens. By perseverance Hannibal passed the Alps in the depth of winter, with an army of 140,000 men. By perseverance some of you have already warred successfully with sloth, that inveterate foe to intellectual advancement. By perseverance Benjamin Franklin and a host of worthies rose superior to obscure birth and early disadvantages, and acquired lasting fame in the various departments of literature and the mechanic arts, and we may do the same.

  Think that the eyes of our friends are upon us, they who have forsaken all they held dear on earth to plead our cause, are looking to us to uphold their hands, shall we disappoint them? Think of the groans, the tears of your enslaved sisters, and rouse up every slumbering energy and again go forward in the path of duty and improvement, adopting Perseverance as your motto, and the difficulties of the way will vanish like clouds before the morning sun. As often as this dear evening shall return evince, by your attendance here, that you love literature, that you love your people, and that nothing shall be wanting on your part to elevate them.

  PHILADELPHIA, SEPT. 25TH, 1832.

  2

  SOJOURNER TRUTH

  (ca. 1797–1883)

  Born Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, New York, the woman the world knows as Sojourner Truth was a slave for almost thirty years before escaping and devoting her life to the abolition movement. She rose to prominence in the 1850s, touring the North, giving speeches on the subjects of abolition and women’s rights. Her first language was Dutch, she spoke with a Dutch accent, and she never learned to write. Truth was one of the few well-known abolitionists who called for all emancipated persons, men and women, to be granted equal rights. During the Civil War she worked in Washington, D.C., for the Freedman’s Relief Association. After the war, she continued to give speeches and advocate for desegregation. She died in 1883.

  Anthologizing Sojourner Truth poses a problem, one with which scholars such as Nell Painter, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, and many others have grappled. Truth is known to us only through the pens of other wri
ters. The following are two versions of Truth’s well-known address given at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention on May 18, 1851, in the Stone Church in Akron, Ohio. The first, from the Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851, edited by Bugle editor Marius Robinson, Truth’s close friend and secretary to the convention, does not include the phrase most associated with Truth. Frances D. Gage, who was also present, wrote the most widely known account twelve years after the fact, provoked by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s account of meeting Truth, “The Libyan Sibyl,” published in the April 1863 Atlantic Monthly. Three accounts of Truth’s efforts on behalf of Western settlement are included here. The first is a petition she dictated in 1870 involving public land in the West; the second, remarks on Western settlement from the “Commemoration of the Eighth Anniversary of Negro Freedom in the United States—A Large Gathering and Eloquent Speeches in Tremont Temple, January 1, 1871.” The third is a letter to the editor (dictated) from 1871.

  “Speech Delivered to Women’s Rights Convention in Akron Ohio” (1851)

  Anti-Slavery Bugle Version (1851)

  SOURCE: “Woman’s Rights Convention,” Salem (Ohio) Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851.

  May I say a few words? I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint and man a quart—why cant she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much,—for we cant take more than our pint’ll hold. The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and dont know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they wont be so much trouble. I cant read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept—and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part? But the women are coming up blessed by God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.

  Frances D. Gage Version (1863)

  SOURCE: F. D. Gage, “Sojourner Truth,” New York Independent, April 23, 1863.

  Well, chillen, whar dar’s so much racket dar must be som’ting out o’ kilter. I tink dat, ’twixt the niggers of de South and de women at de Norf, all ataking ’bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking ’bout? Dat man ober dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have de best place eberywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mudpuddles, or gives me any best place; And ar’n’t I a woman? Look at me. Look at my arm. I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ar’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man, (when I could get it,) and bear de lash as well—and ar’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen chillen, and seen ’em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ar’n’t I a woman? Den dey talks ’bout dis ting in de head. What dis dey call it? [“Intellect,” whispered some one near.] Dat’s it, honey. What’s dat got to do with woman’s rights or niggers’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart, wouldn’t ye be mean not to me have my little half-measure full? Den dat little man in black dar, he say woman can’t have as much right as man ’cause Christ wa’n’t a woman. Whar did your Christ come from?

  Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had noting to do with him. That if de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all her one lone, all dese togeder, ought to be able to turn it back and git it right side up again, and now dey is asking to, de men better let ’em. ’Bleeged to ye for hearin’ on me, and now old Sojourner ha’n’t got nothin’ more to say.

  Selections on Western Settlement from Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1875)

  SOURCE: Olive Gilbert and Frances W. Titus, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Salem, NH: Ayer, 1875), 199.

  Petition to Congress.

  “TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, in Congress assembled:—

  “Whereas, From the faithful and earnest representation of Sojourner Truth (who has personally investigated the matter), we believe that the freed colored people in and about Washington, dependent upon government for support, would be greatly benefited and might become useful citizens by being placed in a position to support themselves: We, the undersigned, therefore earnestly request your honorable body to set apart for them a portion of the public land in the West, and erect buildings thereon for the aged and infirm, and otherwise legislate so as to secure the desired results.”

  “Truths from Sojourner Truth”

  “Now, here is de question dat I am here to-night to say. I been to Washin’ton, an’ I fine out dis, dat do colud pepul dat is in Washin’tun libin on de gobernment dat de United Staas ort to gi’ ’em lan’ an’ move ’em on it. Dey are libin on de gov’ment, an’ dere is pepul takin’ care of ’em costin’ you so much, an’ it don’t benefit him ’tall. It degrades him wuss an’ wuss. Therefo’ I say dat these people, take an’ put ’em in de West where you ken enrich ’em. I know de good pepul in de South can’t take care of de negroes as dey ort to, case de ribils won’t let ’em. How much better will it be for to take them culud pepul an’ give ’em land? We’ve airnt lan’ enough for a home, an’ it would be a benefit for you all an’ God would bless de hull ob ye for doin’ it. Dey say, Let ’om take keer of derselves. Why, you’ve taken dat all away from ’em. Ain’t got nuffin lef’. Get dese culud pepul out of Washin’tun off ob de gov’ment, an’ get de ole pepul out and build dem homes in de West, where dey can feed themselves, and dey would soon be abel to be a pepul among you. Dat is my commission. Now adgitate them pepul an’ put ’em dere; learn ’em to read one part of de time an’ learn ’em to work de udder part ob de time.”

  From The N. Y. Tribune. Sojourner Truth at Work.

  “To the Editor of the Tribune:—

  “SIR: Seeing an item in your paper about me, I thought I would give you the particulars of what I am trying to do, in hopes that you would print a letter about it and so help on the good cause. I am urging the people to sign petitions to Congress to have a grant of land set apart for the freed people to earn their living on, and not be dependent on the government for their bread. I have had fifty petitions printed at my own expense, and have been urging the people of the Eastern States for the past seven months. I have been crying out in the East, and now an answer comes to me from the West, as you will see from the following letter. The gentleman who writes it I have never seen or heard of before, but the Lord has raised him up to help me. Bless the Lord! I made up my mind last winter, when I saw able men and women taking dry bread from the government to keep from starving, that I would devote myself to the cause of getting land for these people, where they can work and earn their own living in the West, where the land is so plenty. Instead of going home from Washington to take rest, I am traveling around getting it before the people.

  “Instead of sending these people to Liberia, why can’t they have a colony in the West? This is why I am contending so in my old age. It is to teach the people that this colony can just as well be in this country as in Liberia. Everybody says this is a good work, but nobody helps. How glad I will be if you will take hold and g
ive it a good lift. Please help me with these petitions. Yours truly,

  “SOJOURNER TRUTH.

  “FLORENCE, MASS., FEB. 18, 1871.

  “P. S. I should have said that the Rev. Gilbert Haven of Boston is kindly aiding me in getting petitions signed, and will receive all petitions signed in Massachusetts and send them to Congress.

  S. T.”

  3

  MARY PRINCE

  (ca. 1788–after 1833)

  Two years after achieving her freedom, Mary Prince dictated her life story to anti-slavery activists. Her account is considered the first slave narrative by a woman. Prince tells of being born into slavery in Bermuda, purchased as an infant by a sea captain to be a gift to his granddaughter, to whom she would serve as a companion for twelve years. Prince was subsequently sold to a series of owners on other islands before returning to Bermuda. After a family named Wood brought Prince to England, the Anti-Slavery Society petitioned Parliament to demand her freedom. The family quickly left England with Prince; she subsequently became a servant to Mr. Thomas Pringle and his family. She dictated her history to anti-slavery activist Susanna Strickland; Pringle edited and published the account in 1831. This excerpt is from this popular and controversial narrative. Three editions were printed in the year of its publication; meanwhile, attacks on Prince and Pringle appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, in which Prince was maligned as a “despicable tool” for voicing lies invented by Pringle. Pringle was sued for libel in 1833. Prince’s court appearance in these cases adds additional details to her story.

  “The idea of writing Mary Prince’s history was first suggested by herself,” Thomas Pringle affirmed. “She wished it to be done, she said, that good people in England might hear from a slave what a slave had felt and suffered; and a letter of her late master’s, which will be found in the Supplement, induced me to accede to her wish without farther delay. The more immediate object of the publication will afterwards appear.” Prince’s pointed, critical voice can be discerned in her narrative, both in reports of a brutal flogging or as she corrects the misguided views on slavery. She withstands the rage of her master and mistress and insists “To be free is very sweet.”