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**Unfortunately this event has to be cancelled. We hope to reschedule in future months.**Abolitionist, teacher, social reformer, poet, and writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore also but had significant Ohio connections. Educated at her uncle’s school where she learned Bible, literature, and public speaking, she taught at Union Seminary in Columbus from 1950 to 1954. After moving to Pennsylvania and lecturing on a national circuit, she married Fenton Harper in Cincinnati in 1960, bought a farm, and gave birth to her daughter Mary. After the Civil War and death of her husband, Harper toured the South where she saw appalling injustices. She then joined the Christian Women’s Temperance Union and the American Women’s Suffrage Association and co-founded the National Association of Colored Women.
Her influential 1983 World’s Fair speech “Women’s Political Future” deserves study by contemporary audiences. For Semicolon Club, we’ll look at this speech, her influential abolitionist poem “Bury me in a Free Land” and her nine poems selected by the Poetry Foundation, including one based on Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We will also talk about chapters 11, 12, 31 and 32 of Harper’s novel Iola Leroy. Links for all material are provided at www.stowehousecincy.org/upcoming-events.
About the Discussion Facilitator:
Dr. Cheli Reutter is professor in the Department of English at the University of Cincinnati. Her research and education focus on American and African American literature, medical humanities, and disability literature.
Dr. Reutter has also been a member of the Board of the Friends of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House for several years.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
2533 Kemper Ln, Cincinnati, OH 45206-2013, United States
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