This photograph offers a three-quarters length portrait of African American activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper standing behind a chair with her hands on the chair’s back. Her body is turned to her right, but she faces viewers directly. Her dress is dark, with a bustle skirt, darker sleeves, and a row of buttons down the front of a skirted vest that matches the fabric of the dress skirt. Harper used this photograph as a frontispiece in some of her later books.

If you need a brief recharge, tune in to C-SPAN2 / American HistoryTV tomorrow afternoon: a rich Nov 2025 program on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper featuring @drkmttr82.bsky.social, Sherita Johnson, & me via @amantiquarian.bsky.social. Harper still has so much to teach! www.c-span.org/event/americ...

a stack of books, spines facing out and consisting of (from top to bottom) Willa Cather's O Pioneers, Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic, Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones, Traci Chee's We Are Not Free, Malinda Lo's Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Julia Alvarez's Before We Were Free, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, Sabaa Tahir's All My Rage, and Nicola Yoon's The Sun Is Also A Star

This is one of those classes that I just never want to end.

Join us tonight online at 7:00 PM ET for “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Civil War and Reconstruction” with Eric Gardner in conversation with Sherita L. Johnson and Derrick R. Spires. www.americanantiquarian.org/programs-eve...

a stack of books, spines facing: from top, Becky Chambers' A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gain All-Stars, Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons, Sarah Gailey's Upright Women Wanted, Charlotte Nicole Davis' The Good Luck Girls, Gish Jen's The Resisters, Nino Cipri's Finna, Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police, Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Donna Barba Higuera's The Last Cuentista

one term is just never enough

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s bicentennial is a call to action Harper’s voice is as urgent now as it was centuries ago — and her vision lives on through The 19th’s HBCU fellowship and other efforts in her name.

On her 200th birthday, Harper’s voice is as urgent now as it was centuries ago — and her vision lives on through The 19th’s HBCU fellowship and other efforts in her name.

Print ISBN 9780197804490. Use the discount code AUFLY30 for 30% off the hardcover directly from Oxford UP. Also available online through Oxford Academic. See global.oup.com/academic/pro...

This photograph offers a three-quarters length portrait of African American activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper standing behind a chair with her hands on the chair’s back. Her body is turned to her right, but she faces viewers directly. Her dress is dark, with a bustle skirt, darker sleeves, and a row of buttons down the front of a skirted vest that matches the fabric of the dress skirt. Harper used this photograph as a frontispiece in some of her later books.

The footnotes I struggled with most in my new book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction (#24 & #28) are in Chapter 1, and THAT is the chapter that is currently freely available to everyone. Book info in the comments. See academic.oup.com/book/60645/c...

Print ISBN 9780197804490. Use the discount code AUFLY30 for 30% off the hardcover directly from Oxford UP. See global.oup.com/academic/pro...

The cover of Eric Gardner’s book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction. On a blue background, the largest portion of the cover reproduces a C19 engraving of African American author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper from William Still’s 1872 The Underground Rail Road. The portrait shows her head and upper body. She is wearing traveling clothes, and she is in three-quarters profile, facing to the left. Her hair is pulled back in her signature chignon, and she looks ahead with wisdom and determination. The engraving lines can be seen throughout the portrait, especially on her skin and her dress. A mostly-opaque yellow rectangle rests perhaps two-thirds of the way down the cover below Harper’s chin and neck. Here, inside a thin brown border, the words “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s” are offered in brown all caps, followed by the words “Civil War and Reconstruction” in smaller white all caps, followed by a partial centered line, followed by the author’s name in smaller brown all caps.

A birthday present for Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s 200th: you can now read Chapter 1 of my new book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction online for free for a limited time! Please share widely. Book info in the comments. Check out: academic.oup.com/book/60645/c...

Dr. Dye, your candle is amazing, and lighting it in commemoration and celebration of Frances Harper was fire!

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is 200 today! @c19americanists.bsky.social @digblk.bsky.social @ccp-org.bsky.social @blkgrlpoet.bsky.social @profgabrielle.bsky.social @npr.org She’s just as fabulous, relevant, and fiery now as she was in C19! For a sample, see commonplace.online/article/vol-...

After a decade of work, here is the unboxing of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction! Cloth ISBN 9780197804490. Use discount code AUFLY30 to get 30% off at global.oup.com/academic/pro...

The cover of Eric Gardner’s book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction. On a blue background, the largest portion of the cover reproduces a C19 engraving of African American author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper from William Still’s 1872 The Underground Rail Road. The portrait shows her head and upper body. She is wearing traveling clothes, and she is in three-quarters profile, facing to the left. Her hair is pulled back in her signature chignon, and she looks ahead with wisdom and determination. The engraving lines can be seen throughout the portrait, especially on her skin and her dress. A mostly-opaque yellow rectangle rests perhaps two-thirds of the way down the cover below Harper’s chin and neck. Here, inside a thin brown border, the words “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s” are offered in brown all caps, followed by the words “Civil War and Reconstruction” in smaller white all caps, followed by a partial centered line, followed by the author’s name in smaller brown all caps.

The digital version of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction is now available for folks who have Oxford Academic Access! Online ISBN 9780197804520; print (forthcoming) ISBN 9780197804490. See academic.oup.com/book/60645

Excerpts from proofs of the title page of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Civil War and Reconstruction by Eric Gardner and of the Contents page. The latter lists: Acknowledgments, page ix; Chapter 1, Strangers and Neighbors: Recovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Life and Work, page 1; Chapter 2, Origin Stories, page 29; Chapter 3, Reconstructing an Abolitionist Voice, page 66; Chapter 4, “Go on”: Harper’s Challenges to Reconstruction, page 94; Chapter 5, “Lay the whole foundation anew”: Harper in the Thick of Reconstruction, page 134; Chapter 6, The Fifteenth Amendment and Epic Struggles, page 176; Chapter 7, Endings and Not, page 221; Notes, page 263; Works Cited, page 295; Index, page 305.

Proofs are proofed. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction is on track for 1 Oct release from Oxford UP. The book wouldn’t exist w/o support from the NEH & so many librarians & scholars committed to the fact that Black history is American history. We still have so much to learn.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s “National Salvation”: A Rediscovered Lecture on Reconstruction - Commonplace What makes Harper’s January 31 [1867] lecture rare is that we have its full text. The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph printed a transcription of “National Salvation” the day after Harper spoke.

“[I]t may have been the fourth of July; it does not matter.... The next day my child … said: ‘I know why we can’t ride in the cars; because we are colored!’ … yet … trodden under foot as our people are, I would not change souls with the richest and proudest stockholder….”--Frances E. W. Harper 1867

because when things are broken, I always turn to Hemingway for the fix. . . .

Detail from the front page of the 10 October 1863 issue of the Weekly Anglo-African (a Black newspaper published in New York) that shows Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s poem “The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth,” commemorating the efforts of the famed all-Black Civil War regiment. For more on the poem including its full text, see https://scholarlyediting.org/2013/editions/aa.18631010.1.html and https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/25194/24963

Per Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, remembering Black soldiers who “marched to the front, faithful to the country when others were faithless—who were rallying around the flag when Rebels were trampling it under feet; true to the country when she wanted a friend.” See commonplace.online/article/vol-...

An engraving of a head-and-shoulders portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) in three-quarters profile. Wearing traveling clothes and her hair gathered in her signature chignon, she looks with calm determination to the viewer’s left. Originally in William Still's 1872 book The Underground Rail Road.

September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the sixth of six essays in the exciting forum on Harper in the current issue of Legacy, @brigfield.bsky.social’s breathtaking & visionary “Generational Harper.” muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

Detail from a photograph of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) featuring her head and shoulders. Her body is turned to the right, but she faces the camera directly, with a calm power. Her hair is pulled back, and she wears a fashionable nineteenth-century traveling dress. Harper use the larger version of this photograph--a three-quarters view of her standing behind a chair--as the frontispiece in several of her later works.

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances E. W. Harper’s birth. Here’s the fifth of six essays in the forum on Harper in the current Legacy, Barbara McCaskill’s wise & rich “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Ethics of Personal Rest and National Restoration”: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

Details from two photographs showing individual African American women: at left, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, and, at right, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Both are head and shoulders pictures. Mossell’s body is turned slightly to her right, but she faces the camera slightly to her left. Harper’s body is turned to more to her right, but her face aims directly at us. Both are in fashionable late nineteenth-century dresses. Mossell’s hair is up, and Harper’s is pulled back.

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances E. W. Harper’s birth. Here’s the fourth of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current Legacy, Nazera Sadiq Wright’s amazing study of Harper, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, & Black library use & creation: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

This photograph offers a three-quarters length portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) standing behind a chair with her hands on the chair’s back. Her body is turned to her right, but she faces viewers directly. Her dress is dark, with a bustle skirt, darker sleeves, and a row of buttons down the front of a skirted vest that matches the fabric of the dress skirt. Harper used this photograph as a frontispiece in some of her later books.

September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the third of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, Leslie Schwalm’s groundbreaking intro to Harper’s work in Iowa (!) muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

A contemporary color photograph of a three-story rowhouse in Philadelphia owned by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper during the last four decades of her life. The front façade is red brick. The first floor features a blue door (at the top of a short set of off-white stairs) and two double hung windows trimmed in white with blue shutters and blue window boxes. Two basement windows made of glass blocks can be see below the first-floor windows. The second and third floor each feature two double hung windows, again with white trim and blue shutters. Off-white lintels matching the front stairs are placed at the top of the door and basement windows and at the top and bottom of the other windows. A small cornice done in blue with yellowish accents tops the structure. This is an end unit and the photograph approaches the structure at an angle, so the end side wall of gray stone is also visible. Various utility wires interrupt the view of parts of the second and third floors. A historical marker—a sign on a tall pole—can be see to the viewer’s right, rising from the red brick sidewalk. The rowhouse immediately to the right is brown brick, separated visually from the Harper home by a white drainage pipe running from the roof to a black base in the sidewalk.

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the second of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, the powerful “We Need to Speak about Home” by Kristin Moriah @dark-stars.bsky.social: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

An engraving of a head-and-shoulders portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) in three-quarters profile. Wearing traveling clothes and her hair gathered in her signature chignon, she looks with calm determination to the viewer’s left. Originally in William Still's 1872 book The Underground Rail Road.

September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the first of six essays in the forum celebrating & commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, Lois Brown’s stunning & timely “Catalysts for Justice”: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

An engraving that offers a head-and-shoulders portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) in three-quarters profile. Wearing traveling clothes and her hair gathered in her signature chignon, she looks with calm determination to the viewer’s left. Originally in William Still's 1872 book The Underground Rail Road.

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. To help commemorate and celebrate, the current issue of Legacy features a forum on Harper’s life and work. This week, I’ll share each of the six essays; for now, here’s the intro: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

Mutual, @eagandean.bsky.social!

A powerful piece by Patricia Okker, former President of the New College of Florida, on how reading American women writers can shape our current moment. This is what the humanities can do, and this is why they are so afraid of us. Free access from Legacy: muse.jhu.edu/article/959226

Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Based on the lens of history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s bes...

Help us reach 10K followers on Bluesky.

We provide free people's history lessons, Teach the Black Freedom Struggle classes, Teaching for Black Lives study groups, book giveaways, this day in people's history posts, & we organize to defend the right to teach truthfully.
www.zinnedproject.org

The cover of Courtney Thorsson’s book The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture. On a sepia background of varying tones, the top of the cover offers the title of the book in large black all caps spread over two lines, with a line between the words. Under another line, the subtitle appears in smaller black letters. Under another line, the author’s name appears in smaller black all caps. The bottom half of the cover is filled with a stunning 1977 picture (again, with sepia tones) of a group of African American women, most wearing coats and smiling, some sitting and some standing. They are Vertamae Grosvenor, Alice Walker, Lori Sharpe, Toni Morrison, June Jordan, Nana Maynard, Ntozake Shange and Audreen Ballard—some of the members of the title group, all women who changed the landscape of American literature.

Save the NEH! More great books on Black history & culture--these, all aided by the NEH: Courtney Thorsson’s meticulous & beautiful The Sisterhood studies a world-changing community of Black women writers (Morrison, Shange, Jordan & more) @courtneythorsson.bsky.social cup.columbia.edu/book/the-sis...

Care about the National Endowment for the Humanities? You should! NEH makes lives better & for some folks simply makes life possible. Consider @altnehgov.bsky.social & @humanitiesall.bsky.social. And really valuable ideas to help save NEH at: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...

The book cover for The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States by Derrick R. Spires. On a light gray background, the top two-thirds of the cover show a matted and framed C19 print; the frame is contemporary brown wood. The shadows around the frame give a three-dimensional effect, as if the frame is resting on the cover. The print is from the American Antislavery Almanac for 1837 and is titled “A Sketch of God’s Description of the ‘Consequence of Emancipation.’” At the right side of the engraving, a tree stands with a sign saying emancipation nailed to it. In its boughs, broken chains and manacles are draped. In the far distance, center, we see what looks like the US Capitol building. In the foreground, a Black man in a long coat holds an open Bible with one hand and has his other hand raised heavenward, index finger pointing up. A Black woman holding a baby and a toddler kneels beside him along with a third young girl (also kneeling). In the mid-ground we see a cabin and a group of African Americans facing the capitol and cheering. The book’s title appears in bold black letters below the frame, the subtitle appears in smaller all caps below the title, and the author’s name in larger all caps appears below the subtitle.

Save the NEH! More great books on Black history & culture--these, all aided by the NEH: Derrick R. Spires’s The Practice of Citizenship is an archivally-rich must-read about early Black print but also about what we should be doing now. @drkmttr82.bsky.social www.pennpress.org/978081225080...