We are thy sisters; God has truly said
That of one blood the nations he has made.
O Christian woman, in a Christian land,
Canst thou unblushing read this great command?
Suffer the wrongs which wring our inmost heart
To draw one throb of pity on thy part!
Our skins may differ, but from thee we claim
A sister’s privilege and a sister’s name.
The “Grave of the Slave” became quite popular, and was set to music by
Frank Johnson, the great negro musician of Philadelphia.
The next woman we shall delight to honor is Mrs. Frances Ellen Watkins
Harper. Mrs. Harper has been an Anti-Slavery lecturer in the days
now past, and wrote several poems of great worth in that movement.
Since the emancipation of the slaves she has been a lecturer in the
temperance cause, and is now Superintendent in the National Woman’s
Temperance Union, and is also a director in the Woman’s Congress, of
which she has been one of the ablest members.
Both as a writer of prose and poetry Mrs. Harper’s talents are too well
known to need eulogy at our hands. She is still among us, laboring
with her pen, as her poem, entitled “The Dying Bondsman,” and her
contribution to the symposium on the Democratic return to power,
both published in the _A. M. E. Church Review_, attest. She likewise
contributed to the “Alumni Magazine” and many of the first-class
weeklies published by our race.
We give a brief quotation from her beautiful poem, entitled “Moses. A
story of the Nile.”