Robert Browning wrote, “Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?” Frances Watkins Harper’s list of accomplishments, author, poet, teacher, suffragist, reformer, and abolitionist, shows she believed that about women, too.

Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1825, Frances’ parents died when she was three. She was raised by her aunt and minister abolitionist uncle, Henrietta and William J. Watkins who had been teaching free children to read and write since 1820. No wonder activism came naturally to Frances. By the age of twenty-one, she published Forest Leaves, her first book of poetry. She produced no less than 80 poems and four novels, all of which touched on the issues of oppression she would fight against for the rest of her life.

At age twenty-six, she taught domestic science at Union Seminary in Ohio for a year then moved to Pennsylvania where she taught as well. A Maryland law threatened enslavement to any free African American who returned to the state from the North, so she remained in Pennsylvania with Mary Still and her husband William, the father of the Underground Railroad. While with them, Frances began writing poetry for anti-slavery newspapers. In 1858, she wrote one of her most celebrated poems, “Bury Me In A Free Land.” That same year, she refused to give up her seat and move to the colored section of a Philadelphia trolley.

She spoke for eight years for anti-slavery societies in the US and Canada on the issues she wrote about: racism, women’s rights, and classism. In 1859, she wrote “The Two Offers,” the first short story ever published by an African American woman and the essay “Our Greatest Want” which compared the slavery of African Americans with that of the Hebrews of the Old Testament.

In 1860, she married Fenton Harper and had one daughter, Mary, but unfortunately, became widowed four years later.

At the 1866 National Woman’s Right’s Convention, she spoke urging support for suffrage for African American women who, being Black and female, needed the vote, too. Attendees organized the American Equal Rights Organization, but a split between the members occurred over support of the 15^th Amendment, which gave African American men the vote before White women. Siding with those championing the amendment, Frances helped form the American Woman Suffrage Association instead.

She spent the rest of her days working for social reform to better the lives of African Americans. She served as the vice-president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, director of the American Association of Colored Youth, and superintendent of the African American designated sections of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Unions.

The home Frances lived in from 1870 until her death in 1911 is a historic site within the National Park Service.

https://www.nps.gov/places/frances-ellen-watkins-harper-house.htm.

For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, share in the comments your impression of Frances, her accomplishments and/or what you believe women should reach for.

One Breath Away
by Michal Scott

Sentenced to hang for a crime she didn’t commit, former slave Mary Hamilton was exonerated at literally the last gasp. She returns to Safe Haven, broken and resigned to live alone. She’s never been courted, cuddled or spooned, and now no man could want her, not when sexual satisfaction comes only with the thought of asphyxiation. But then the handsome stranger who saved her shows up, stealing her breath from across the room and promising so much more. Wealthy, freeborn-Black, Eban Thurman followed Mary to Safe Haven, believing the mysteriously exotic woman was foretold by the stars. He must marry her to reclaim his family farm. But first he must help her heal, and to do that means revealing his own predilection for edgier sex. Hope ignites along with lust until the past threatens to keep them one breath away from love…

Excerpt from One Breath Away… 

Arousal—fondly remembered and sorely missed—sizzled between Mary Hamilton’s well-rounded thighs. Moisture coated her nether lips and threatened to stoke the sizzle into a blaze. The sensation surprised her, as did the owner of the gaze that lit the flame.

Eban Thurman stood against an opposite wall of the town’s community hall. Although the room was wide as two barns and filled with revelers, neither the distance nor the presence of the crowd lessened the power of his gaze. He studied her with a curiosity that didn’t grope with disdain, but caressed with approval.

With respect.

This kind of appreciation was never given to women as dark and as large as she. Gratitude heated her face.

Gratitude and embarrassment. Her lavender toilet water couldn’t hide the fragrance of arousal. She shuddered with shame then glanced around. Had anyone else detected the odor? All the merrymakers seemed too caught up in the rhythmic fast fiddling and foot-stomping of Safe Haven’s seventh annual Juneteenth Revel to notice her discomfort.

In 1872 Texas who took note of a black woman who ain’t been asked to wed?

Yet Eban’s perusal said not only did he take note, but he liked what he saw.

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