Black History Month

Sermon | February 12, 2023| Lisa Jebsen

Back in my college days, I took a couple of English courses from Dr. Vicki Patraka that explored theatre play scripts with some very challenging topics, mostly based on historical events. I don’t have the syllabus handy, but I’m pretty sure we read, discussed and wrote about a dozen plays in a semester. During one of the classroom discussions, I expressed some mental fatigue from the heavy subject matter and her response was blunt. “I’m sure the many who suffered were tired, too.” Initially her words stung – especially since it was in front of the whole class – but deep down, I knew what she was driving at. Although we weren’t using terms like “white privilege” in the late 80s, this was her way of pointing that out. 

Those feelings of shame, combined with a desire to “do better” have haunted me as I tackled today’s topic. With the many issues we are facing today it’s so easy for this self proclaimed anti-racist, empath and world-class overthinker to get paralyzed. Yet, even in this paralysis, I recognize privilege! 

Al of this is just a long-winded way of telling you I want to honor Black History Month beyond the month shown on the calendar. And yes, the cruel irony Black History being assigned the shortest month of the year is not lost on me. I also dare to dream that we might some day live in a world where Black History is just HISTORY! 

 The remarkable stories I’m about to share come from an article on uuteachin.org – I’ll include that link along with other sources along this sermon on the UUCOM website.

Also – one quick caveat – some of this history is old enough that outdated words like “negro” are used. 

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) had some of the most challenging circumstances one can imagine for a person of color. When she was born in Maryland in 1825, her parents were free but they lived in a state where slavery was legal. She was taken in by her aunt and uncle, Henrietta and William Watkins after her parents died when she was only 3.  The Watkins were  abolitionists who also ran Baltimore’s Academy for Negro Youth a school where Black children, including Frances, could get an education – no mean feat for POCs in 19th century US.

At thirteen – like many her age at the time – she joined the workforce as a housekeeper and seamstress in the home of a Baltimore bookstore owner where she was encouraged to use the family’s library. Access to this literature inspired her to read and write poems and essays that were published in a local newspaper. By the time she was 20, a collection of her writings were published in her first book, Forest Leaves.

Ripple effects of the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850 meant that even though she was “born free” she could be captured and forced into slavery. So she fled to “free state” Ohio while her aunt and uncle went to Canada. Two years later she moved to  Pennsylvania where she became involved with the Underground Railroad.

During this time, Frances continued to write and to publish books of poetry becoming the first Black woman to earn a living through her writing. Most of this income was donated to help her uncle’s work with the Underground Railroad. In 1854, the Maine Anti-Slavery Society hired her to travel around the northeast as an abolitionist speaker which in turn made her one of the most famous speakers and authors of the day. With words like these, it’s easy to understand her popularity… 

A hundred thousand newborn babes are annually added to the victims of slavery; twenty thousand lives are annually sacrificed on the plantations of the South. Such a sight should send a thrill of horror through the nerves of civilization and impel the heart of humanity to lofty deeds. So it might, if men had not found out a fearful alchemy by which this blood can be transformed into gold. Instead of listening to the cry of agony, they listen to the ring of dollars and stoop down to pick up the coin.

She backed up her words with actions like boycotting goods produced by slave labor like sugar and cotton. The latter must have been very challenging in a time period where fabric options were so limited!

In 1860 as the Civil War began, Frances Watkins married Fenton Harper, who already had three children. The two had a daughter together, and Frances took some time off of her writing and speaking to focus on her family. A few short years later, her husband died and Frances Watkins Harper made the tough call to send her children to live with relatives so she could return to speaking engagements to support her family. By then, LIncoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation so she her advocacy focused on women’s rights and for legal and civil rights for Black people. Her poems and essays eloquently depicted the experiences of newly freed slaves. 

In 1870, she joined the Unitarian Church in Philadelphia (now known as the First Unitarian Church of Philly) while also maintaining her membership at the African Methodist Episcopal Church where she taught Sunday School. In these “two worlds” she found communities and allies to fight for  education and voting rights for Black people.  She wrote three novels specifically for Black people, highlighting family connections and choices about racial identity. 

During her 80+ years, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper “used her voice and privilege as an educated, free Black woman to raise awareness of the plight of Blacks in the United States after the Civil War.” 

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“What can religion further do to advance the condition of the colored people? More religion and less church. . . . Less theology and more of human brotherhood, less declamation and more common sense and love for truth.” . . . . Those words were spoken by Fannie Barrier Williams, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. She was 38 years old. More on that later…

To tell the story of her earlier years, I’d like to read an excerpt from teachinuu.org that does an excellent job of summarizing her life as a young Black woman in the Reconstruction Era …  

Fannie Barrier was angry. She was furious. She was embarrassed and hurt and disgusted. She had discovered that no matter how talented, educated, and polite she was, her race made her a second class citizen. In Washington, DC, where she herself was a teacher, she had decided to take a painting class. Then she discovered that her art instructor had erected screens to separate her from the white students in the class. Thinking that things would be better in the North, she had enrolled in a music school in Boston. The principal there had told her she had to leave the school because some of the white students were threatening to quit if they had to go to school with a Black person.

Fannie had a lot of gifts. She was a talented painter and pianist, a good student and a good friend. She had grown up in Brockport, NY, a mostly white town, during and after the Civil War, where she felt accepted as a social equal. It was only when she set out to do something “large or out of the ordinary” in her life that she smacked right up against a system that said she was of less value than white people. And it was when she bumped up against this system, she found her greatest gifts and used them to help people whose lives were more difficult than her own.

Fannie married Samuel L. Williams and they moved to Chicago’s South Side where the two teamed up to establish his lawyer practice. She had many friends, both Black and white who shared her interest in the arts. Her attempts to persuade her white friends to offer jobs to skilled Black women were largely unsuccessful – even when she argued that the employer’s Christian faith called them to do better. 

While doing this work, she met Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, minister of the Unitarian Church of All Souls. She became a member and worked with others there to establish the Abraham Lincoln Centre, which provided services like housing, a library and education to the community, regardless of race.

When Fannie learned that there were no women of color helping to plan the World’s Parliament of Religions at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, she fought for inclusion. Happily, she was invited to organize and speak. During this international event, she gave her famous speech, “Religious Duty to the Negro,” imploring Christian churches to practice what they preach to fight for justice for Black people. 

Her powerful words led to paid speaking engagements all over. For some of those, she also played piano! Fannie Barrier Williams continued to use her formidable gifts to expose and fight racism her whole life – right up to the end when she passed away in 1944 in her hometown, Brockton, New York. 

In my preamble today, I bemoaned the fact that Black History month seems to be confined to February. While reviewing my sermon this morning, it struck me that I could do something about it. Granted, it’s a very small step, but this is me fighting my tendency to overthink in real time. Rather than hurry through the third story I brought to share, I’m going to save it for next month – when we honor Women’s History. I look forward to sharing the powerful story of Annie B. Jordan Willis, the daughter of one of the first Black Unitarian ministers, Rev. Joseph Fletcher Jordan. Her family’s story continues a major throughline of the fight for education rights we’ve heard in the other stories I’ve shared today. 

I hope you will join me on March 5 to learn about Annie and others. More importantly, I hope you continue to be an ally, as a noun and a verb.

May it be so. Blessed be. 

SOURCES

TeachIn2: Black UU Ancestors | uuteachin

Frances E. Watkins Harper, Poet, and Abolitionist born – African American Registry 

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper | National Women’s History Museum

https://www.Blackpast.org/african-american-history/williams-fannie-barrier-1855-1944/

Abraham Lincoln Centre, Settlement House of Chicago, and All Souls Unitarian Church.