THE AFRO-AMERICAN WOMAN IN VERSE.

Every age and clime has been blessed with sweet singers, both in song and verse. Many women have attained to rare excellence in each of these lofty vocations. Among modern songsters Jenny Lind, Patti and Parepa have won golden laurels. In verse Elizabeth Barrett Browning stands pre-eminent. She not only honored her own English island home, but sunny Italy, the land of her adoption, has been purified and sweetened by the power of her verse. And with rare appreciation and devotion has this land of poetry and art showered honors on this sweet singer.

That we, too, of the African race have equally shared in the gift of the muses, having had sweet singers born among us, I have chosen for my theme, “The Afro-American Woman in Verse.”

Have we not had among us Elizabeth Greenfield, “The Black Swan,” and have we not now Madame Selika, Flora Batson, Madame Jones and Madame Nellie Brown Mitchell? Crowned heads, as well as the uncrowned populace, have delighted to do honor to many of the sweet singers of our race. And have not two continents hung in breathless silence on the melody floating heavenward from the lips of our Jubilee Singers?

That we have also among us those with rare talent for verse we hope to prove in the limits of this short article.

During the year 1761 there sailed from Africa for America a slave ship. Among its passengers was a little girl, then seven or eight years of age. The following is from Williams’ “History of the Negro Race:” “She was taken, with others, to the Boston slave market. There her modest demeanor and intelligent countenance attracted the attention of Mrs. John Wheatley, who purchased her. It was her intention to instruct the child in ordinary domestic duties, but she afterward changed her mind and gave her careful training in book knowledge. The aptness of the child was a surprise to all who came in contact with her. In sixteen months from her arrival she had learned the English language so perfectly as to be able to read the most difficult portions of Scripture with ease, and within four years she was able to correspond intelligently. She soon learned to read and even translate from the Latin. One of Ovid’s tales was her first attempt. It was published in Boston and England and called forth much praise. Pious, sensitive and affectionate by nature, Phyllis soon became endeared not only to the family to whom she belonged, but to a large circle of friends. Mrs. Wheatley was a benevolent woman, and took great care of Phyllis, both of her health and education. Emancipated at the age of twenty, she was taken to Europe by a son of Mrs. Wheatley.”... “She was heartily welcomed by the leaders of society of the British metropolis, and treated with great consideration. Under all the trying circumstances of social life among the nobility and rarest literary genius of London, this redeemed child of the desert coupled to a beautiful modesty the extraordinary powers of an incomparable conversationalist. She carried London by storm. Thoughtful people praised her, titled people dined her, and the press extolled the name of Phyllis Wheatley, the African poetess.... In 1773 she gave a volume of poems to the world. It was published in London. It was dedicated to the Countess of Huntington, with a picture of the poetess and a letter of recommendation, signed by the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Boston. In 1776 she addressed a poem to George Washington, which pleased the old warrior very much. Unfortunately no copy of this poem can be found at the present date.” In a letter, however, he wrote to Joseph Reed, bearing date of the 10th of February, 1776, from Cambridge, Washington refers to it. He says: “I recollect nothing else worth giving you the trouble of, unless you can be amused by reading a letter and poem addressed to me by Miss Phyllis Wheatley. In searching over a parcel of papers the other day, in order to destroy such as were useless, I brought it to light again. At first, with a view of doing justice to her poetical genius, I had a great mind to publish the poem; but not knowing whether it might not be considered rather as a mark of my own vanity than a compliment to her, I laid it aside till I came across it again in the manner just mentioned.”

This gives the world an “inside” view of the brave old general’s opinion of the poem and poetess; but the outside view, as expressed by Washington himself to Miss Phyllis, is worthy of reproduction at this point.

Cambridge, 28 February, 1776.

Miss Phillis:—Your favor of the 26th of October did not reach my hands till the middle of December. Time enough you will say to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honor of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints.

If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the muses, and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.

I am, with great respect, your obedient, humble servant,

George Washington.

We regret our loss of this poem on account of the great general’s modesty, but rejoice in the fact that the greater number of Miss Wheatley’s poems were published in one volume, and given to the world.

We will quote as largely as the limits of this paper will allow from this volume.

A FAREWELL TO AMERICA.

The love of freedom is beautifully expressed in a poem “To the Right Honorable William Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America.”

We cannot refrain from giving one more proof of the intelligence and genius of this young African poetess. It is dedicated to “The King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” on the repeal of the Stamp Act.

At the death of Mrs. John Wheatley, Phyllis married John Peters, a grocer of Boston, of whom it is said, “he wore a wig, carried a cane, and quite acted out the ‘gentleman.’” But not being a gentleman, except in seeming, he soon grew jealous of the attention his wife received, and by his abuse and harsh treatment shortened her life, her death occurring December 5th, 1784, in the thirty-first year of her life. She was the mother of one child.

Esteemed by all and beloved by many, her influence upon the rapidly growing Anti-Slavery sentiment was considerable. Her works were pointed to as an unanswerable argument in favor of the humanity of the Negro and his capability to receive culture.

From 1784 until 1890, there has not been a volume of poems written by a colored woman published in America. Several pamphlets and scattered poems have appeared from time to time in magazines and papers either devoted to the interest of the race or edited by colored men. But the race has never failed through all these long years of bondage to embalm in song and verse the beautiful thoughts that years of ceaseless oppression could not entirely banish from their minds. Through all the long years of slavery, through all the aftermath of the reconstruction era, the weird, plaintive melodies that welled up in their souls passed down from mother to child, and at last bore fruit when sung by the band of singers from the South land, the sweet-voiced Jubilee Singers, who sung a University⁠[2] into existence.

During the time of the publication of the Liberator, by William Lloyd Garrison, and at the time of the Anti-Slavery movement in Philadelphia, Sarah Forten, a woman of large culture and great refinement, wrote several poems. Some of these were published by Mr. Garrison in the Liberator. We present our readers the following:

THE GRAVE OF THE SLAVE.

ON THE ABANDONMENT OF PREJUDICE.

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.”