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Very soon the Yankee teachers
    Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,-
    It was agin' their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide
    Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge didn't agree with slavery-
    'Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal
    A little from the book,
And put the words together,
    And learn by hook or crook.

I remember Uncle Caldwell,
    Who took pot-liquor fat
And greased the pages of his book,
    And hid it in his hat.

And had his master ever seen
    The leaves up on his head,
He'd have thought them greasy papers,
    But nothing to be read.

And there was Mr. Turner's Ben,
    Who heard the children spell,
And picked the words right up by heart,
    And learned to read 'em well.

Well, the Northern folks kept sending
    The Yankee teachers down;
And they stood right up and helped us,
    Though Rebs did sneer and frown.

And, I longed to read my Bible,
    For precious words it said;
But when I begun to learn it,
    Folks just shook their heads,

And said there is no use trying,
    Oh! Chloe, you're too late;
But as I was rising sixty,
    I had no time to wait.

So I got a pair of glasses,
    And straight to work I went,
And never stopped till I could read
    The hymns and Testament.

Then I got a little cabin-
    A place to call my own-
And I felt as independent
    As the queen upon her throne.

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Very soon the Yankee teachers Came down and set up school; But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,- It was agin' their rule. Our masters always tried to hide Book learning from our eyes; Knowledge didn't agree with slavery- 'Twould make us all too wise.

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Biography from the Unitarian Universality Association

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Biography from the Unitarian Universality Association

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Originally published in Stirring the Nation’s Heart: Eighteen Stories of Prophetic Unitarians and Universalists of the Nineteenth Century (Boston:…

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Colored Conventions Project | Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200

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Colored Conventions Project | Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200

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Official website from the Colored Conventions Project includes biography, timeline, historical context, interactive maps, etc.

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Home - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200

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An exhibit in the collection of the Colored Conventions Project

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Background resources and suggested readings for community readings/engagement with Harper's work

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The #Harper200 Nationwide Read-a-thon - Colored Conventions Project

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Bringing Nineteeth-Century Black Organizing to Digital Life

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Frances E. W. Harper at 200: Commemorating Her Life and Legacy - Center for Black Digital Research

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Frances E. W. Harper September 24, 1825 - February 22, 1911 The year 2025 marks the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's birth. The Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk is hosting #Harper200, a slate of exciting scholarly and arts programming and community events to commemorate Harper's life and legacy.

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Pursuit of Absolute Equality (~3 min video)

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Pursuit of Absolute Equality (~3 min video)

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Highlights Harper's focus on intersectionality as path to absolute equality. Middle grade +

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Pursuit of Absolute Equality  ||  Our Composite Nation

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Mural Arts: Colored Conventions Project in Philadelphia and Beyond (2022)

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Mural Arts: Colored Conventions Project in Philadelphia and Beyond (2022)

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Mural includes Frances EW Harper alongside Richard Allen, William Still, and others

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An exhibit in the collection of the Colored Conventions Project

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The Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection is a collaborative project to provide digital access to materials documenting the roles and experiences of Black Women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and, more broadly, women’s rights, voting rights, and civic activism between the 1850s and 1960.

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Biography of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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The Philadelphia Black Metropolis is a

city within a city built by more than 20,000 free Black people in Philadelphia in 1838.

​

The 1838 Philadelphia Black Metropolis is also a movement to reclaim, rewrite and restore suppressed or forgotten Black Histories

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The Philadelphia Black Metropolis is a

city within a city built by more than 20,000 free Black people in Philadelphia in 1838.

​

The 1838 Philadelphia Black Metropolis is also a movement to reclaim, rewrite and restore suppressed or forgotten Black Histories

RECLAIM

Reclaim the geographic spaces of colonial and antebellum Philadelphia Black history through walking tours and events.

What We Do

RESTORE

Restore our collective knowledge of free Black history in Philadelphia through talks, trainings, and curriculum and museum education tools.

REWRITE

Recenter the free Black population's on-going efforts for emancipation through disciplined historical research and writing.

DISCOVER UNTOLD HISTORIES

Lesson plans from historical institutions in Philadelphia.

Our short videos are a great way to quickly learn interesting facts about The Black Metropolis.

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The Philadelphia 1838 Black Metropolis | Philadelphia Black History

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Come discover the Philadelphia Black Metropolis, a world created by 20,000 free Black people in Philadelphia in 1838. See Philadelphia Black history timelines, use our resources for Black History Teaching.

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Very soon the Yankee teachers
    Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,-
    It was agin' their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide
    Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge didn't agree with slavery-
    'Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal
    A little from the book,
And put the words together,
    And learn by hook or crook.

I remember Uncle Caldwell,
    Who took pot-liquor fat
And greased the pages of his book,
    And hid it in his hat.

And had his master ever seen
    The leaves up on his head,
He'd have thought them greasy papers,
    But nothing to be read.

And there was Mr. Turner's Ben,
    Who heard the children spell,
And picked the words right up by heart,
    And learned to read 'em well.

Well, the Northern folks kept sending
    The Yankee teachers down;
And they stood right up and helped us,
    Though Rebs did sneer and frown.

And, I longed to read my Bible,
    For precious words it said;
But when I begun to learn it,
    Folks just shook their heads,

And said there is no use trying,
    Oh! Chloe, you're too late;
But as I was rising sixty,
    I had no time to wait.

So I got a pair of glasses,
    And straight to work I went,
And never stopped till I could read
    The hymns and Testament.

Then I got a little cabin-
    A place to call my own-
And I felt as independent
    As the queen upon her throne.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Very soon the Yankee teachers Came down and set up school; But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,- It was agin' their rule. Our masters always tried to hide Book learning from our eyes; Knowledge didn't agree with slavery- 'Twould make us all too wise.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore and raised by her aunt and uncle.

A poet, novelist, and journalist, Harper was also a prominent abolitionist and an activist in the temperance and women's suffrage movements. She traveled to multiple states to lecture and give speeches about these issues. In May 1866, she delivered the speech, "We Are All Bound Up Together" at the National Women's Rights Convention in New York, sharing the stage with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. "You white women speak here of rights," she said. "I speak of wrongs."

With Margaret Murray Washington, the wife of Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, and other prominent African American women, Harper helped found the National Association of Colored Women and served as its vice president in 1897.

Harper authored numerous books, including the poetry collections Sketches of Southern Life (Ferguson Bros. & Co., 1891); Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (Merrihew & Thompson, 1854); and the recently recovered Forest Leaves (1845). She is best known for her novel Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (Garrigues Brothers, 1892). Harper also penned numerous short stories, particularly "The Two Offers," an early feminist work, believed to be the first short story published by an African American woman in the U.S.

Before marrying Fenton Harper, a widower, with whom she had a daughter, Harper worked at Union Seminary in Ohio, where she taught sewing. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper died in Philadelphia on February 22, 1911.

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore and raised by her aunt and uncle.

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© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

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The Sparrow’s Fall by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at Allpoetry

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Comments & analysis: And this little badge became the wedge / Which broke their galling chain. / And lifted the

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"The Slave Mother" as read by Phylicia Rashad 

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"The Slave Mother" as read by Phylicia Rashad 

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Phylicia Rashad Reads "The Slave Mother"

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Harper's influence on Black Literature (~1 min video)

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Harper's influence on Black Literature (~1 min video)

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Influence on the Evolution of Black Literature

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From Harper's 1866 speech to the National Woman's Rights Convention held in NY, May 1866. Among other speakers were Susan B. Anthony, Frances D Gage, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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“We are all bound up together” — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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Songs for the People by Frances Ellen Watkins... | Poetry Foundation

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Preserving the Legacy of Frances EW Harper | Philadelphia Historical Commission (Video)

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Preserving the Legacy of Frances EW Harper | Philadelphia Historical Commission (Video)

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APT - The Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides

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Preserving the Legacy of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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Frances EW Harper Historical Tour | Opera Philadelphia

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Frances EW Harper Historical Tour | Opera Philadelphia

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Opera Philadelphia | Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Historical Tour

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From the National Women's History Month site

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From the National Women's History Month site

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As a poet, author, and lecturer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a household name in the nineteenth century. Not only was she the first African American woman to publish a short story, but she was also an influential abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer that co-founded the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born on September 24, 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland. An only child, Harper was born to free African American parents. Unfortunately, by the time she was three years old, both of her parents died and she became an orphan. Harper's aunt and uncle, Henrietta and William Watkins, raised her after her parent's death. Her uncle was an outspoken abolitionist, practiced self-taught medicine, organized a black literary society and established his own school in 1820 called the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth. Frances Harper learned from her uncle's activism and she attended the Watkins Academy until she was thirteen years old. At that age, children were typically expected to join the workforce. Harper took a job as a nursemaid and seamstress for a white family that owned a bookshop. Her love for books blossomed as she spent any free time she had in the shop. By age twenty-one, Harper wrote her first small volume of poetry called Forest Leaves.

When she was twenty-six years old, Harper left Maryland and became the first woman instructor at Union Seminary, a school for free African Americans in Wilberforce, Ohio. She taught domestic science for a year and then moved to a school in York, Pennsylvania. Shortly after she began working as a teacher, her home state of Maryland passed a law stating that free African Americans living in the North were no longer allowed to enter the state of Maryland. If found, they would be imprisoned and sold into slavery. Harper was now unable to return to her own home. She decided to devote all of her efforts to the antislavery cause. Harper moved in with William and Letitia George Still who were abolitionists and friends of her uncle. William Still became known as the father of the Underground Railroad while he was an office clerk and janitor in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Supported by the Stills, Harper began writing poetry for antislavery newspapers. Her poem "Eliza Harris," was published in The Liberator, and in Frederick Douglass' Paper. By the time Harper left Philadelphia in 1854, she had compiled her second small volume of poetry called Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects with an introduction by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

For the next eight years, Harper traveled across the United States and Canada as a lecturer. After her first speech entitled, "The Elevation and Education of our People," she was hired as a traveling lecturer for various organizations including the Maine Anti-Slavery Society and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. In addition to her antislavery lectures, Harper was committed to the struggle for women's rights and the temperance movement. She included her observations from her travels in her writings and began to publish novels, short stories, and poetry focused on issues of racism, feminism and classism. In 1859, Harper published a short story in the Anglo-African Magazine called "The Two Offers." This short story about women's education became was the first short story published by an African American woman.

On November 22, 1860, Frances married Fenton Harper and the couple had a daughter named Mary. Unfortunately, Fenton Harper died four years later. After her husband's death, Frances Harper began touring again and formed alliances with prominent women's rights activists. In 1866, Harper spoke at the National Woman's Rights Convention in New York. Her famous speech entitled, "We Are All Bound Up Together," urged her fellow attendees to include African American women in their fight for suffrage. She emphasized that Black women were facing the double burden of racism and sexism at the same time, therefore the fight for women's suffrage must include suffrage for African Americans. The next day, the Convention held a meeting to organize the American Equal Rights Association to work for suffrage for both African Americans and women. However, the organization soon split over the decision to support the fifteenth amendment, granting African American men the right to vote. Harper, along with Frederick Douglass and many others supported the amendment and helped to form the American Woman Suffrage Association.

Harper spent the rest of her career working for the pursuit of equal rights, job opportunities, and education for African American women. She was a co-founder and vice president of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and the director of the American Association of Colored Youth. She was also the superintendent of the Colored Sections of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women's Christian Temperance Unions. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper died on February 22, 1911 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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As a poet, author, and lecturer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a household name in the nineteenth century. Not only was she the first African American woman to publish a short story, but she was also an influential abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer that co-founded the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

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Nov. 25, 1859: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Writes to John Brown in Prison

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Black abolitionist and writer, wrote to John Brown as he awaited his execution.

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From the NY Historical Society Teen Blog

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: A Trailblazer in Intersectionality | The New York Historical

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Well before Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was already articulating the interconnectedness of race, class, and sex.

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Reflections from Black journalists on Harper's Legacy

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Rebekah Barber, Daja E. Henry, Katherine Gilyard, Ashaki “Nzingha” Thompson-Hall

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‘We are all bound up together’: The 19th’s fellows on the life and legacy of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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On the anniversary of her passing, The 19th’s fellows honor the “mother of African American journalism,” who our HBCU fellowship is named for.

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Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (Published 1857)

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Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (Published 1857)

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Full text of Harper's second book of poetry

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African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

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African American Poetry: Frances E.W. Harper, “Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects” (1857)

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Frances E.W. Harper, “Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects” (1857), with a Preface by William Lloyd Garrison

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"The (not so) secret Philly History of 'The Gilded Age'" | Inquirer

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"The (not so) secret Philly History of 'The Gilded Age'" | Inquirer

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The (not so) secret Philly history of ‘The Gilded Age’

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LisaGay Hamilton plays Philadelphia poet, author, and suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in ‘The Gilded Age.’

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Getting to know Frances Harper: Pa. activist for civil rights, women’s suffrage

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Before sculpture’s June dedication, Philly is invited to get to know the undersung 19th-century advocate for slavery’s abolition and women’s right to vote.

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"Gathering at the Crossroads" | Harrisburg Historical Society

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"Gathering at the Crossroads" | Harrisburg Historical Society

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Alexandra Shehigian with research support from The Council of Independent Colleges

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A Gathering at the Crossroads - The Story of the Commonwealth Monument | Harrisburg Historical

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On August 26, 2020, A Gathering at the Crossroads commemorated the anniversaries of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments through the installation of a monument to Harrisburg’s Black history. 150 years after the right to universal male suffrage was granted to the people of the United States, and 100 years after women’s suffrage was established, 2020 marked the intersection of the legacies of past achievements, and the inconsistencies and obstacles of the present. Beginning in the Spring of…

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Includes video, photos, background of sculpture featuring Lucretia Mott and Frances EW Harper at the Philadelphia Center City Police Station

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Donald Lipski’s most recent work of public art was unveiled earlier this month as part of the opening of Philadelphia’s new Public Safety Building which houses the Police Department Headquarters, Police District 6 and 9, the Medical Examiner’s Office, and 911 Call Center.  In 2019 Lipski wa

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Women Who Shaped History | Smithsonian Magazine

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Women Who Shaped History | Smithsonian Magazine

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Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.

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Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore and raised by her aunt and uncle.

A poet, novelist, and journalist, Harper was also a prominent abolitionist and an activist in the temperance and women's suffrage movements. She traveled to multiple states to lecture and give speeches about these issues. In May 1866, she delivered the speech, "We Are All Bound Up Together" at the National Women's Rights Convention in New York, sharing the stage with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. "You white women speak here of rights," she said. "I speak of wrongs."

With Margaret Murray Washington, the wife of Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, and other prominent African American women, Harper helped found the National Association of Colored Women and served as its vice president in 1897.

Harper authored numerous books, including the poetry collections Sketches of Southern Life (Ferguson Bros. & Co., 1891); Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (Merrihew & Thompson, 1854); and the recently recovered Forest Leaves (1845). She is best known for her novel Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (Garrigues Brothers, 1892). Harper also penned numerous short stories, particularly "The Two Offers," an early feminist work, believed to be the first short story published by an African American woman in the U.S.

Before marrying Fenton Harper, a widower, with whom she had a daughter, Harper worked at Union Seminary in Ohio, where she taught sewing. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper died in Philadelphia on February 22, 1911.

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore and raised by her aunt and uncle.

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Permanent Exhibit at the African American Museum Philadelphia, include Frances EW Harper

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Includes analysis of Harper's 1866 speech

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Explores why Harper may not be as well-known as her contemporary, Sojourner Truth, and the challenges of how we position race and gender in historical frameworks

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Harper, Historiography, and the Race_Gender Opposition in Feminism

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Frances Ellen Watkins: Family Legacy and Antebellum Activism

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Detailed look at Harper's life before marriage, including her early influences in her family, her education, and her first lecture circuits in the North

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On Dandelions | Introduction from Antiracist Reading Revolution 

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On Dandelions | Introduction from Antiracist Reading Revolution 

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From Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul

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Dandelion: The Plant that Conquered the World (video)

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Dandelion: The Plant that Conquered the World (video)

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Dandelion: The Plant That Conquered The World

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Dandelions and Civilization: Forgotten History (video)

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Dandelions and Civilization: Forgotten History (video)

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The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

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Dandelions and Civilization: A Forgotten History

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In this poem, Julio Noboa Polanco chooses to reject conformity and instead embrace and celebrate individuality.

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My science teacher said there are no monographs on the dandelion. Unlike the Venus fly-trap or Calopogon pulchellus, it is not a plant worthy of scrutiny. It goes on television between the poison squirt bottles, during commercial breakaways from Ricki Lake. But that’s how life parachutes to my home. Home, where they make you do … Continue reading “Dandelion”

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Tyshawn Sorey’s ‘Save the Boys’ reimagines a 134 year-old poem for today

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Opera Philadelphia commissioned the composer to use the 1887 Frances Harper poem “Save the Boys” as opera for the Black Lives Matter movement.

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Changemakers: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper – National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

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The Changemakers series of inquiries provide teachers multiple opportunities to incorporate the history of the Underground Railroad into their curriculum across the academic year. Additionally, there are opportunities for cross-disciplinary study and collaboration. While the inquiries are aligned to eighth grade Ohio and Kentucky standards, we hope teachers across grade levels and disciplines utilize these materials. Throughout this series, lessons and activities will connect the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement to today through personal and community stories. Spanning various subjects, the overarching theme focuses on the impact changemakers have during their lifetime, the evidence they leave behind, and their ongoing impact today. Lessons and activities are unique and can build upon each other.

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Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez and Nqobile Mthethwa. 25 pages.
A mixer role play that explores the connections between different social movements during Reconstruction.

Time Periods: 19th Century, Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864, Reconstruction Period: 1865 - 1876

Themes: African American, Reconstruction, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Racism & Racial Identity, Slavery and Resistance

I recently used the lesson plan When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer in my 9th grade Honors U.S. History class. I had previously used the 'If There Is No Struggle...': Teaching a People's History of the Abolition Movement lesson, where I had students take on the role of members of the American Anti-Slavery Society to debate abolitionism in the mid-1800s. My students had enjoyed that activity, and when I found the "Reconstruction Mixer," I was excited to try it.

For context, this lesson came after a few days of discussion and reading about the Reconstruction Era. Students had built some background knowledge about Reconstruction, the major goals/problems, and the backlash to increased civil rights and freedoms of African Americans. We had looked at examples of Thomas Nast's political cartoons for perspectives on Reconstruction in the North, and students had done a gallery walk of "Black Codes" passed in Mississippi right after the Civil War.

I felt that this lesson would open their eyes to the myriad possibilities that existed for change during Reconstruction and get beyond the typical, textbook narrative that it had failed due to political compromise, or worse, because of poor governance by "carpetbaggers" and African Americans in the South. I taught the lesson in one day, and I found I needed to do minimal setup for students to take on the role of a historical figure. My students loved the chance to get into "character" and think about what their historical figure had stood for. Once the mixer got started, students naturally took on the roles and partnered up to share their stories and gather information to answer the questions included in the plan. We haven't studied the Women's Suffrage Movement or the Labor Movement so it was a great chance for students to start to get background on those issues in a very organic, unscripted way.

I had students reflect on 3 questions after the mixer: (1) Whose story did you find most interesting? Why? (2) What did you learn about the Reconstruction period from this activity? (3) How did you feel about this activity? Some student responses:

"The Reconstruction period was the best time to fight for equal rights and establish new laws!"

"I found Henry Highland Garnet's story to be the most interesting because he continued fighting for other people's freedom."

"I learned black people got to have some freedom in the Reconstruction period."

"I learned that everyone had different reasons to fight for equal rights, women's rights, or black men's rights, and sometimes these people didn't all agree."

"It was cool! I wish we had more time!"

"Many different people were taking a chance to change America."

The role-plays, simulations, and general outside-the-box teaching activities offered by Zinn Education, including "When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible," give me an opportunity to teach history in a way I wished my high school teachers had embraced. The creators of these lessons clearly understand that students often learn best from EACH OTHER rather than through direct instruction, rote memorization, or textbook reading. With minimal background and setup needed, this lesson was a powerful edition to my unit on Reconstruction.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Baltimore, Maryland

My experience learning about the Reconstruction Era in school (which I'm sure was like most people's) centered around the Reconstruction Amendments and the actions of the President and Congress.

As a teacher, I wanted to go beyond the amendments to introduce my students to the individuals who were involved in the abolition movement and the fight for equality and justice. The Reconstruction Mixer lesson did just that. Students took on roles of people involved not just in the abolitionist movement but also in the women's rights and union workers' movement. It's a good day when students know the names and stories of people who fought for justice in their community and their nation.

The diversity of the people included in the activity led to some interesting conversations. In our post-mixer discussion, students spoke up about the tensions between different movements, especially the abolitionist and women's rights movements. My class delved into a deeper conversation about what to do when you don't get what you are fighting for - do you support the other movements or do you stand firm and focus on only what you want? This is a discussion we would not have had if we had just looked at the Reconstruction Amendments and the actions of the people at the top! I will definitely be doing this lesson again in my class.

Middle Social Studies Teacher, Massachusetts

Role plays are such an excellent way of engaging students in learning. When the Impossible Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer allows students to interact with both the content and one another to further their learning. I chose to do the lesson at the end of our unit on Reconstruction. Students had a good basis of understanding, but only from the newly freedmen and women's perspective. This activity revealed to the students, as well as myself, the new possibilities that many Americans recognized after emancipation.

During our debriefing discussion, some students were struck by the narrow thinking behind many activists who placed, as one student mentioned, "priorities of justice," believing that the nation could only have justice for one group at a time. Another student even mentioned how easy it was for many of the people involved in social activism to lose site of the bigger picture of "justice for all," refuse the collaboration and solidarity of others and allow racism and sexism to derail their own movements. One group of students connected past learning to debunk this myth by mentioning how the Women's Liberation Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement and African-American Civil Rights Movements all co-existed and moved towards social justice during the same decades of the 20th century.

I was impressed with the connections that this activity allowed for my students to make. It was a perfect lesson to include in our study of Reconstruction.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Woodburn, Oregon

I used When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible last year and LOVED it. The stories the students learned in the mixer brought to life how extraordinary this time was and not just something to brush past on our way to our unit on the Second Industrial Revolution. It segued us into that unit as well as into the Great Migration. This curriculum led to excellent "push/pull" conversations, too.

The most powerful story for me was that of Benjamin Montgomery who actually bought Jefferson Davis', the President of the Confederacy, plantation! What a man! What a story!

For the mixer, I had my students create name badges and they put their interview sheets on a clip board. We sat outside at tables and when one interview was over they raised their hands and moved to a new table to hear a new story. I participated as well and loved interacting with my students.

When we finished, we went inside and each table group discussed what they learned. Then we had a class discussion about what surprised us, what inspired us, and what upset us. Back in their table groups (of 3 or 4) they connected what they learned from the activity to other themes in history and/or today. A second class discussion led to topics The Trail of Tears, immigration, the Holocaust, Japanese internment, and police brutality. They even added in Supreme Court decisions and first amendment rights!

This activity came in the last month of the school year for my eighth grade class and WOW. I was so impressed by the higher-order-thinking it facilitated and inspired by how aware these kids are to what is right with America, and what is still so very wrong.

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Santa Rosa, California

The classroom textbook does not really highlight the successes of Reconstruction and focuses on the backlash to this progress. Reconstructing the South: A Role Play successfully revealed to my students the problems that needed to be addressed during Reconstruction. In particular, students were interested in the questions about what should happen to the land and if there should be any consequences for Confederate leaders.

The second Reconstruction lesson, the Reconstruction Mixer, was also very successful. It showed students the social organizing that happened during Reconstruction. The question of addressing Black rights and women's rights got students thinking about the challenges of organizing, and how difficult it is to make radical changes when people do not agree on issues. I like the diversity of the people included in the role, and that there were several people I had not heard of before. Students enjoyed the mixer format. We also did the Election of 1860 Role Play and this mixer was a nice change of routine.

I decided to spend more time on Reconstruction than during the Civil War because of these great lessons available. I think it's important to show the post-war progress after learning about the cruel economic system of enslavement. I would use it again in a class, for sure.

High School Social Studies, Peterborough, New Hampshire

Teach Reconstruction Campaign

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When the Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: A Reconstruction Mixer

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"The ability of newly freed people to imagine their former owners serving them, or to walk off a plantation en masse in a society that had heavily policed Black movement, reveals the possibilities of a period where something that had only a few years prior seemed unthinkable was now a fact of life."

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Anika Khedekar, Taja Richardson, Christine Woods

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An American Trailblazer: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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Documenting the movement of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s poetry

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Before Rosa Parks: Frances Watkins Harper

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The title “Before Rosa Parks” loosely links a number of lessons that discuss African-American women who were active in the fight for civil rights before the 1950s. This lesson highlights Frances Watkins Harper, who challenged power structures in the South by talking to free former slaves about votin…

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Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.

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Frances E. Watkins Harper - First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

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Frances E. W. Harper A Brighter Coming Day: Rediscovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 28, 1825 – February 22, 1911) February 20 to February 27, 2011 100th Anniversary of the Death of Frances E.W. Harper 12 Events in Various Locations Introduction and Biography Why I Love Frances Harper: “I am attracted to smart women. I […]

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Illuminating an artist’s life | University of Delaware

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Dance concert celebrates the life and legacy of 19th century writer and activist Frances Harper

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7 Influential Black Women Abolitionists

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7 Influential Black Women Abolitionists

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7 Influential Black Women Abolitionists | HISTORY

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These women reshaped the fight against slavery by suing for freedom, rescuing the enslaved and teaching the newly fre…

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Free Printable - Dandelion Life Cycle and Learning Activities

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Dandelions are more than just cheerful yellow flowers—they’re wonderful tools for learning! Their fascinating life cycle, structure, and uses make them perfect for hands-on…

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Dandelion Life Cycle Free Montessori Nature Printable

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Dedicated to the missing children of war, 911, United Nations Day, 2002. The word majnun means mad or crazy in many languages.

I am almost majnun-majnun
searching for you in the cinders of cement
in the limp of wounded pigeon.

Rat fowl of urban rot
Have you seen my daughter?
Are you pecking her remains from hardened asphalt?
I am lost without her.
Her lungs were my lungs were my throat in my eye.
Have you seen my daughter?
She disintegrated into a sky burial of trade.

I am almost I am almost majnun-majnun
detonated propellers spiral into my cabin
exhaust roars raining flesh
gray human paste covers Manhattan.
This puddle is my husband.
He was renamed the falling man.
He has joined the blood river of twisted carcass.
majnun-majnun

Have you seen my sister?
She was tortured by a regime that looks like you
Lacerated in the spin of piano wire,
she is bleeding oil
a lily pad sinking in the Mediterranean.

Have you seen him?
You did see him, your brother.
You swallowed him in the gasp of television.
He is branded to the inside of your eyelids.
Descending in the blink of horror, he lives in you.
He is a tear gland squatter
a perpetual spiral down a landscape of eye.

Have you seen my daughter?
I am lost without her.
Her picture hangs from my neck like a stethoscope.
Her eyes are of Christ, jeweled mocha orbs.
I am looking for her in the dusk flake of air,
in the incidental pauses between words.
A morphine drip pats time silent.

Have you seen Mary, Maryam, Malaika, Marta?
Ah, Marta

Her hair is rain forests, each strand a disciple of its own. She is almost I am almost
majnun.
The plague of chemical lake pumps her veins.
Her nipples are a leaky dioxin faucet.
Her baby is a dowry traded to the North Star.
It is a unicorn born deformed in the raw sewage
of Guatemala.

a displaced monsoon/scarf poetry blowing in soot
Have you seen? majnun.

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Dedicated to the missing children of war, 911, United Nations Day, 2002. The word majnun means mad or crazy in many languages. I am almost majnun-majnun searching for you in the cinders of cement in the limp of wounded pigeon. Rat fowl of urban rot Have you seen my daughter?

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"When people say, "we have made it through worse before"" by Clint Smith

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A Poet Reflects On How We Reckon — Or Fail To Reckon — With The Legacy Of Slavery

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Atlantic writer Clint Smith grew up surrounded by Confederate iconography, being told that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. He shares a poem from his forthcoming book, How the Word Is Passed.

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The summer I was ten a teenager
named Kim butterflied my hair. Cornrows
curling into braids
behind each ear.

Everybody's wearing this style now, Kim said.

Who could try to tell me
I wasn't beautiful. The magic
in something as once ordinary
as hair that for too long
had not been good enough
now winged and amazing
now connected

to a long line of crowns.

Now connected
to a long line of girls
moving through Brooklyn with our heads
held so high, our necks ached. You must
know this too - that feeling

of being so much more than
you once believed yourself to be

and there we are

and there we are

and there we are again

and Oh! How could we not have seen
ourselves before? So much more

We are so much more.

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Absolute - The summer I was ten a teenager

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Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

O, let America be America again- And yet must be-the land where
The land that never has been yet-

every man is free. The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!

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Let America Be America Again - Let America be America again.

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Our museums, research centers, and the National Zoo are open today, and will remain open through Saturday, October 11. If the government shutdown continues past October 11, the Smithsonian will then close to the public.

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Prepared by Penn State Center for Black Digital Research

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Exhibit Curr FINAL

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For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
dragging along never gaining never reaping never
knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss
Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
people who and the places where and the days when, in
memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
were black and poor and small and different and nobody
cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
marry their playmates and bear children and then die
of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox
Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
people's pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and
land and money and something-something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
the dark of churches and schools and clubs and
societies, associations and councils and committees and
conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,

generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
rise and take control.

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For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the

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Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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I, Too by Langston Hughes | Poetry Foundation

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America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

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"The Rose that Grew from Concrete" (Shakur)

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"The Rose that Grew from Concrete" (Shakur)

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The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur

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Comments & analysis: Did you hear about the rose that grew / from a crack in the concrete? / Proving nature's l

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The truth is, I've never cared for the National

Anthem. If you think about it, it's not a good

song. Too high for most of us with "the rockets

red glare" and then there are the bombs.

(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)

Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw

even the tenacious high school band off key.

But the song didn't mean anything, just a call

to the field, something to get through before

the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas

we never sing, the third that mentions "no refuge

could save the hireling and the slave"? Perhaps,

the truth is, every song of this country

has an unsung third stanza, something brutal

snaking underneath us as we blindly sing

the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands

hoping our team wins. Don't get me wrong, I do

like the flag, how it undulates in the wind

like water, elemental, and best when it's humbled,

brought to its knees, clung to by someone who

has lost everything, when it's not a weapon,

when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly

you can keep it until it's needed, until you can

love it again, until the song in your mouth feels

like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung

by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,

the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left

unpoisoned, that song that's our birthright,

that's sung in silence when it's too hard to go on,

that sounds like someone's rough fingers weaving

into another's, that sounds like a match being lit

in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

and isn't that enough?

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A New National Anthem by Ada Limón | Poetry Foundation

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The truth is, I've never cared for the National Anthem. If you think about it, it's not a good song. Too high for most of us with "the rockets red glare" and then there are the bombs. (Always, always, there is war and bombs.)