{"id":161,"date":"2025-08-17T16:47:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T16:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/?page_id=161"},"modified":"2025-10-06T17:53:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T17:53:14","slug":"frances-ellen-watkins-bury-me-in-a-free-land-1858","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/texts\/frances-ellen-watkins-bury-me-in-a-free-land-1858\/","title":{"rendered":"Frances Ellen Watkins, \u201cBury Me in a Free Land\u201d (1858)"},"content":{"rendered":"

INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Harper\"<\/a>
Frances Harper (Still, Underground Railroad, 1872)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)<\/a>\u00a0was one of the most prolific black writers, poets and activists of nineteenth-century America.\u00a0 She was born free in Maryland in 1825 but orphaned at a young age and raised by her aunt and uncle.\u00a0 Harper began publishing poetry in her early 20s.\u00a0 By the 1850s, she had become a leading abolitionist poet and lecturer, based mostly in Philadelphia.\u00a0 She worked closely with William Still, a leader of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee which coordinated Underground Railroad activities in the region.\u00a0 During the Civil War, Harper married and raised a family in Ohio.\u00a0 After the war, she became involved in a number of reform movements and continued her career as a writer.\u00a0 This poem, \u201cBury Me in a Free Land,\u201d originally appeared in an abolitionist newspaper from Ohio,\u00a0Anti-Slavery Bugle,\u00a0<\/em>on November 20, 1858<\/a>, under the byline, Frances Ellen Watkins.\u00a0 The poet was 33-years-old.\u00a0 Harper, who died in 1911, was buried in\u00a0a cemetery near Philadelphia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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