{"id":3013,"date":"2025-06-15T20:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-15T20:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/teagle\/?page_id=3013"},"modified":"2025-07-16T11:27:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T11:27:15","slug":"frances-harper-bury-me-in-a-free-land-1858","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/teagle\/texts\/frances-harper-bury-me-in-a-free-land-1858\/","title":{"rendered":"Frances Harper, Bury Me in a Free Land (1858)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ask no monument, proud and high,
\nTo arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
\nAll that my yearning spirit craves,
\nIs bury me not in a land of slaves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)<\/a> was 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, “Bury Me in a Free Land,” 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 a cemetery near Philadelphia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SOURCE FORMAT:\u00a0\u00a0Poem<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

WORD COUNT:\u00a0 246 words<\/strong><\/p>\n

RELATED TEXTS:\u00a0 Wheatley poem (1773)<\/a> \/\/ <\/strong>Douglass Narrative (1845)<\/a><\/strong> \/\/ Popel poem (1934)<\/a>\u00a0\/\/\u00a0Gorman poem (2021)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

CONTEXT LECTURE:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Douglass and Abolitionism<\/p>\n