National Museum of African American History and Culture

This is the fourth in a series of ongoing blog posts from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI), spotlighting the labor of Smithsonian media collections staff across the Institution. CK Ming currently serves as a Media Conservation and Digitization Specialist at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

An activist, a teacher, a poet — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an extraordinary figure in American history. She was born free in the city of Baltimore in 1825, orphaned at the age of three, and grew up under the tutelage of her uncle Rev. William Watkins.

I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity – because as a lover of my country, I trembled at the coming day of wrath.