Women of the South
Created by Dorothy Emerson and Janet Bowering,
Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society Worship Service
General Assembly 2000, Nashville, Tennessee
Opening Words:Frances Ellen Watkins. Unitarian (1825-1911)
We come, but not to celebrate,
Amid the flight and whirl of years,
The deeds of heroes, on whose brows
Are laurels, drenched with blood and tears.
Not yet to tell of wondrous deeds
Performed on fields of bloodless strife;
But of the lonely precious things,
That bless and beautify our life. (1)
Chalice Lighting
We light our chalice
today in honor of women of the South who showed great courage in
bringing the good news of Unitarianism and Universalism wherever
their life paths led. We would do well to do likewise.
Please join in the
chalice lighting words—the motto of the Unitarian
Universalist Women’s
Heritage Society—which you will find printed in your program:
The flame of our heritage lights the way to our future.
Opening Hymn:
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Unitarian (1911)
The author of the words
of our opening hymn and our opening and closing words is Frances
Ellen Watkins Harper. Frances grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, a free
African American born in 1825 when slavery was not only legal but
very much the practice. Although orphaned at age 3, she was raised by
her uncle in an articulate and well-respected family.
Early on she realized
that her personal survival and well-being was
inextricably linked
with that of the larger society. She believed that confrontation, not
silence, was the way to mental, if not physical, health. When the
Fugitive Slave Law put her in danger of being captured and taken into
slavery, she began her career as a lecturer for the Maine
Anti-Slavery Society.
A member of the First
Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, Frances Harper became not only the
most popular African American writer of the 19th century, but also
one of the most important women in United States history.
Let’s sing her
“Songs for the People.” (2)
Reading: Athalla
Lizzie Johnson Irwin, Universalist (1862-1915J
Athalia Lizzie Johnson
from, daughter of a Baptist minister, was born in 1862 in Eldorado,
Arkansas. When she moved to Columbia, South Carolina, after her
marriage, she became friends with the circuit-riding Universalist
minister, the Rev. Quillen Shinn. This friendship changed her life.
Not only did she convert to Universalism, she became a minister and
circuit rider herself, traveling through the South and serving
churches in Pensacola, Florida, and Little Rock, Arkansas, and later
in Riverside, California, where she moved to be near her daughter.
She writes about her
conversion to Universalism in a poem entitled “From Gethsemane
to Heaven.” Here are excerpts from that poem.
I. Gethsemane [Written
in 1898 between twelve and one o’clock at night on the day of
the author’s self-ordered release from membership in the
Baptist church, because of her desire to be honest to herself and the
church.]
Misdeed,
was it, to tear myself away
From
faith no longer mine? How could I stay?
What
care you now for heaven or for hell,
So
long as conscience tells you all is well?..
II. Heaven [Nearly five
years later, on the day of her ordination to the Universalist
ministry.]
Upon
thy holy altar consecrated now,
In
meekness and in love, I humbly bow.
Interpreter
of life I fain would be,
And
all things are possible to Thee.(3)
UNIVERSALISM IN THE
SOUTH
For our service today,
we have invited a few women from the past to speak to us of their
faith and work and the importance of liberal religion in their lives.
We’ll begin with Universalist women. Our first guest is Julia
Kent Outlaw, from the eastern part of North Carolina.
Julia Kent Outlaw
(1824-1894)
I am Julia Outlaw and I
have spent my life sharing my belief in the good news of Universalism
wherever I could gather a group to hear it. My husband Bryan is a
farmer, and we had six children. When we lived in Duplin County,
North Carolina, at the crossroads known as Outlaws’ Bridge, I
started a Sunday School with fourteen pupils. This was in 1869, and
the terrible war between the states had only been over for a scant
five years. If ever people needed to hear that there was a loving
God, it was then. The land was devastated, and we had little left in
the way of goods or household possessions--and food was mainly what
we could grow for ourselves. But I had my faith to share and “it
was wonderful to see the children’s faces light up when I could
clear the mist from any passage of scripture.”
Many of our neighbors,
especially those in the Baptist church, disagreed with my teaching.
They told the children that they always were opposed to fishing and
hunting on Sundays, but that they would much prefer to have them
engage in that than to attend Mrs. Outlaw’s Sunday
School!
However, success
crowned our efforts, and our little school grew until we had sixty
members. At least 100 have been connected with it over the years, and
eventually I know a church will be founded there. If only we could
have regular preaching, Universalism would spread its message of hope
and love throughout the area.
We have had help in the
form of gifts—between 60 and 70 dollars worth— from
church friends up north and words of encouragement for all of our
work. I have always felt that my teaching of the young women in
particular had to remind them of their own worth as persons and
encourage them to get the best education possible.
I have reminded them
even as I grew older that they needed to have choices. I told them to
think ahead. It would be easy to see that their brothers would
inherit the farm, and then, if they didn’t marry, they would
have nothing to call their own. I told them, “You could live
out your life like a hired hand on your family’s home farm. But
you get yourself an education, and you’ll have some choices!”
And you know, a gracious number of them did. The girls from my Sunday
School, they went to college, and they became teachers. Yes—I
taught them, and they gave of their own gifts in return.
Narrator/Host:
To Julia Kent Outlaw we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host:
Now let me introduce to you Hannah Jewett Powell, who lived and
worked for many yeas in the western part of North Carolina.
Hannah Jewett Powell
(1866-194
I am the Rev. Hannah
Jewett Powell. I was born in 1866 in a lumber camp in
Clinton, Maine. We were
very poor, but I was determined to get an education and
become a minister. I
managed to attend Colby College and the divinity school at
Tufts College and was
ordained to the Universalist ministry in 1899 in Waterville,
Maine.
For the next 22 years I
served a number of small parishes in Maine. Then, in 1912, I was
appointed by the Women’s National Missionary Association to
work in the mountains of North Carolina, in a place called Inman’s
Chapel. It was isolated and beautiful, and the people were proud and
a bit wary of strangers from “up north.”
But they were eager to
have Universalism preached again in their small church, which James
Anderson Inman had built in 1868 with his own hands. Though poor in
material goods, they welcomed my ideas for night school classes for
adults and an eight-week summer school. Within three years I had
persuaded the Universalist women’s national organization that
it would be a great blessing to have a real house near the chapel for
our activities as well as a dwelling for the minister. And so we
built Friendly House, a modern, seven-room bungalow with a large room
over the garage for dances, socials, lectures, and even movies! We
had classes in woodworking, sewing, weaving, health, and home care.
Friendly House became a
true center of community with many people sharing their skills and
helping with the upkeep. I found another source of help on my visits
to Universalist churches in the eastern part of North Carolina. There
were an unusually large number of young women who were school
teachers— thanks in part to the advice of Aunt Julia Outlaw. I
persuaded many of them to spend several weeks during their summer
vacations in our beautiful mountain valley, helping with our summer
programs.
In addition, we opened
a dispensary in a quaint old log cabin up the hill from the house. It
was equipped as a first aid station and there were regular visits by
a registered nurse. And so we had the means to care for people, body,
mind, and soul.
I have been richly
blessed. I was fifty-five years old when I found my great challenge
here in North Carolina, and I have had twenty fruitful years in this
place.
Let me end with a
story. When I first came here, “Uncle Ballou,” one of
Father Inman’s sons, confronted me with a list of scriptural
texts against women preaching. I sat down and made another list which
at least evened things up. When Uncle Ballou came to die—though
he had not been a follower—he said, “Turn my body over to
the undertaker. The rest of me I leave to God and Miss Powell. She
will know what to do with it.”
Narrator/Host:
To Hannah Jewett Powell we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host:
Let us welcome Annie Bissell Jordan Willis, who joins us now from
Virginia.
Annie Bissell Jordan
Willis (1893-1977)
My name is Annie
Willis, but I was born Annie B. Jordan. My father, Joseph Fletcher
Jordan, was a convert to Universalism after hearing Rev. Quillen
Shinn preach. My father had a year of training at the Theological
School at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and was
ordained a minister in March 1904.
Then in April, we came
to Suffolk, Virginia, where a school for Negro children had been
established by Universalists in 1894 and a church in 1891. Both were
in need of strong leadership, and my father preached in the church
and taught in the school. My mother Mary and I helped in the school,
which had only a few pupils when we came there.
My father started
publishing a weekly paper, “The Colored Universalist,”
and we all set to work at expanding and improving the school. (The
building had been constructed and dedicated in 1897.)
By 1913 there were 218
pupils and four teachers. There were grades one through eight, and we
later added a ninth grade, since there was no high school that black
pupils could attend. My mother and I were both teachers, along with
two and sometimes three others. The church, too, was growing slowly,
and we had a Sunday School of 52 pupils.
Then in 1916, my mother
died, and I tried to be even more support for my father. The General
Sunday School Association of the Universalist Church took over
funding for the school and raised $1050 for us, but that didn’t
go very far, for we now had 300 students, and the building was filled
over capacity.
It was a busy time and
we knew we were doing much-needed good work. I knew each pupil by
name. We started each day with a song and prayer, and I could
generally tell why a student was absent—often due to working in
the field at peanut harvesting time, for most depended on the nearby
Planter’s Peanut factory to provide jobs and to buy their
crops.
In 1929 my father died,
and I became principal, working with four other teachers. The school
was renamed Jordan’s School. But I couldn’t keep the
church going too, without my father, and so it closed in 1930. Soon
after, the denomination had to cut our funding because of the great
depression—but we never turned a child away even when they
could no longer pay the five-cents-a-week fees. And we didn’t
let them go hungry either. Somehow we managed so that they each had
at least a glass of milk and a sandwich at noon.
In 1939 the school
became a social work project with a kindergarten and a prenatal and
well-baby clinic, plus clubs for older children and a Parents’
League and counseling services.
We no longer taught the
eight grades, for by the end of World War II, public schools were
more open to black children. But we saw so much work still to do.
Education was to be their defense in a world that was not very
welcoming. We at Jordan had a reputation which meant that the Suffolk
police declared that juvenile crime was low in our area because of
the influence of our school. After all, by now we had served three
generations in the community.
We had sent out into
the world: trauma surgeon, L.D. Britt; Suffolk’s vice mayor,
Moses Riddick; Circuit Court Deputy Clerk, Eula Williams; and
teachers, lawyers, beauticians, electricians, and preachers. Our
school gave them a solid sense of who they were. I loved
them—everyone—and I think they knew it. I have been so
lucky in my life work.
Narrator/Host:
To Annie B. Willis we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host:
And now let me introduce Mary Slaughter Scott from Alabama.
Mary Slaughter Scott
(1900-1973)
I am Mary Slaughter
Scott. I was born in the year 1900 in Camp Hill, a small town in the
southeast part of Alabama. I was christened Mary Frances Slaughter,
at Liberty Universalist Church in Camp Hill, a congregation founded
in 1846 by my great- grandparents. They had come there from Georgia,
and their Universalist heritage was probably from the Liberty
Universalist Church of Feasterville, South Carolina, one of our
earliest churches, founded in 1777. My parents were farmers, as were
most of the church members.
When I was growing up,
Camp Hill was the largest Universalist church in the South. I
remember that we had over two hundred in the church school. I was an
active part of that church, and I probably would have become a
Universalist minister had I been born thirty years earlier or later.
As it was, I attended
Judson College in Alabama, taught school for a year, then prepared at
Tufts College to be a Religious Education Director, and then at St.
Lawrence to be a “Minister’s Assistant.”
I worked for a year as
Director of Religious Education at the Universalist Church in
Haverhill, Massachusetts, and then to my great joy became a Field
Worker for the Universalist General Sunday School Association. In
that position I traveled all over the country helping local churches
with their religious education programs. I especially enjoyed it when
I was able to visit our churches in the South, but my work covered
all parts of the country.
It was difficult in
some places to convince people that the church’s program for
young people was important. Many congregations had built lovely
sanctuaries and parish halls, but had made no provision for
children’s classrooms. In Wausau, Wisconsin, I observed that
“the grownups had built themselves a beautiful church.”
Soon after my visit they added a wing for religious education!
I’m grateful for
the opportunity to help spread Universalism, especially to young
people.
Narrator/Host:
To Mary Slaughter Scott we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host
These are just a few of the women who have given life to Universalism
in the South. We celebrate these and all Universalist women who’ve
gone before us to show us the way to live our religion wherever our
life paths may lead.
Song ”The
One’s Who’ve Gone Before Us,” by Done Elizey
Blesoff ©1975 or “We Are Dancing Sarah’s Circle,”
Singing the Living Tradition #212
UNITARIANISM IN THE
SOUTH
Also with us today are
Unitarian women who will share with us their stories of life in the
South and how their faith led them to their life’s work. Let me
introduce to you Laura Matilda Towne from South Carolina.
Laurie Matilda Towne
(182-1901)
I am Laura Matilda
Towne. Although I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I consider
myself a Southerner, because I have lived here most of my life. My
family were members of the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia and
I was inspired by the Rev. William Henry Furness to become an
abolitionist.
Near the beginning of
the Civil War, Northern forces blockaded the Confederate coast and
captured Port Royal Sound. The wealthy cotton growers abandoned their
lands and the people they had held as slaves. In a project known as
the Port Royal Experiment, Northern doctors and teachers were called
to the Sea Islands to help them create new lives as free men and
women. I was thirty-six years old when I arrived in the spring of
1862, and I never left, except for occasional visits to the North.
In the Fall of 1862, my
dear friend and life-long companion, Ellen Murray, arrived, and
together we established Penn School. A few years later, we bought
Frogmore, an abandoned plantation, where we set up our home and where
we love to garden and swim in the surf.
St. Helena Island is
about fifty-six square miles and supports six thousand inhabitants,
mostly African Americans. I began my work here by visiting people in
their homes. They were worn down from overwork and being in slavery.
Despite their miserable living conditions, they had a strong spirit
of life that I knew would help them survive and flourish, now that
the chains of slavery were lifted from their necks. My training in
homeopathy helped them deal with some of the poor health conditions
they suffered.
Once they got the idea
of what education could do for them, they were eager to learn and
grateful for the opportunity our new school provided them. The school
has grown, and in 1870 we began training teachers for service
elsewhere on the islands. Many of our own students have become
teachers, and we are now teaching the children and grandchildren of
our original students.
Some of the white folks
who visit us think it’s strange that all our friends here are
black, but for us it is the most natural thing in the world. I
actually forget these people are black, and it is only when I see
them at a distance and cannot recognize their features that I
remember it. These are my people now, and St. Helena is my home.
Narrator/Host:
To Laura Matilda Towne we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host:
Another Northerner who devoted her life to educating people in the
South is Abby A. Peterson, who came to live and work in North
Carolina after her husband died. Let’s welcome her now.
Abby A. Peterson
(1919)
My name is Abby
Peterson, the widow of Ellis Peterson who was a teacher and school
principal as well as assistant professor at Harvard and, for 27
years, a member of the Board of Supervisors of the Boston Public
Schools.
We lived in Jamaica
Plain, Massachusetts, and were active in the Unitarian Church there.
I served on the board of The National Alliance of Unitarian and Other
Christian Women, and as a result I became interested in the
Alliance’s efforts to keep alive the work which we had
started—to build churches and schools in isolated sections of
eastern North Carolina.
They sent me there in
1900 to help select a site, and as a result of my visit a small
chapel was built at Shelter Neck in the “Watha” area of
Pender County. It was dedicated November 16, 1900, by Dr. Samuel
Eliot of Boston and Mrs. B. Ward Dix, our National Alliance
president, from New York City.
Perhaps because of my
part in all this, I’ve felt close to Shelter Neck, and when my
dear husband died in 1904, I felt that here in North Carolina was a
fine place for me to practice my religion and to demonstrate my
support for our work and for the people who live here.
I was then just
forty-eight years old, and my sons had embarked upon their own ways
and lives. Working here at Shelter Neck and at our sister school
nearby in Swansboro, I could serve the church which was so important
in my life.
I persuaded two young
women to come along with me as teachers and together we established a
firm footing for the instruction that Ellen Crehore had been doing
for the past two years. We eventually developed far more than a basic
elementary school for boarding day students.
Students worked in the
garden and orchard, took part in musical and dramatic presentations,
and gained a practical education. We held an annual Farm Festival
with demonstrations on better farming methods and on preserving foods
as well as on child health and nutrition.
Whether it was a fruit
and vegetable exhibition or an historical pageant or simply clean-up
week, people in the surrounding area came to us for leadership and
for help, as well as using the school buildings to house the
activities. And of course there was our church—the lovely
little chapel, the first Unitarian Church built in North Carolina,
where we held services regularly, usually with a resident minister.
I have had the role of
hospital nurse, physician, housekeeper, and minister, as well as
dispensing general advice and acting as listener and confidante. Ours
was more than just an academic institution. The Shelter Neck
Industrial School was a strong force in the whole area, bringing not
only knowledge but wider understanding and a vision of new
possibilities to far more people than just our students.
My own life has been
very full these last fifteen years and I realize that I was indeed
blessed to have the opportunity for such fulfilling work put before
me.
Narrator/Host:
To Abby A. Peterson we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host:
And now, in a somewhat different vein, Lizzie Crozier French joins us
from Knoxville, Tennessee. Instead of telling us about her life,
she’s going to repeat for us part of what she said back in 1912
to a meeting of the Tennessee Bar Association. As you will recall,
this takes place eight years before the passage of the Nineteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, acknowledging women’s right to
vote. Her work for suffrage helped Tennessee become the deciding
state to ratify the amendment, in August 1920.
Lizzie Crozier
French (1851-1926)
We want to put
Tennessee among the progressive states, and one very important
factor, gentlemen, is to not alter simply law concerning
women, but to take the whole bunch and burn it up, and begin
over again!!!
That might be a big
task. I don’t believe it is as big as to alter one and then
another. For several years I have been studying this subject as
President of the Tennessee Federation of Women’s Clubs, which
is not unanimously in favor of women’s suffrage, but is in
favor of having just laws for women. Delineator Magazine is
investigating laws concerning women, and puts Tennessee at the bottom
as doing justice to women.
I once had the pleasure
of listening to a lecture by Judge Ingersoll before the Ossoli
Circle, and he said that the common law of England in regard to
married women was equal to the assertion that man and wife were one,
and that one was the man. And Blackstone in his Commentaries,
says that a mother is entitled to no power, but only to reverence and
respect! Tennessee laws agree that a mother has no power....
Now, I want to speak
about desertions of wives and children. All our charity organizations
have to meet this thing of non-support and desertion. Your laws have
protected men by giving them all the property of rich women, but have
never protected women and punished men for desertion and non-support.
We want mothers made equal guardians of their children. We don’t
ask that women shall have more rights; we just ask that they shall be
equal.
Now as to the laws
about women holding office... . At one time, a notary public was not
regarded as one who held an office. I don’t know what you
gentlemen think about it, but it looks to me that it is hardly more
of an office than washing dishes. A notary public only swears people
to an oath, and it seems to me women might do that. But when it was
found that notary public was an office, the court decided women could
not hold it. Why should not a woman stenographer working in one of
your offices be a notary public? Why should they want to deprive her
of making that small fee to add to her small income? I leave that to
the committee you’re going to appoint to answer, for I have
never been able to answer.
And those school laws
of 1907! The state of Tennessee—this progressive state that is
going to be—puts in a clause that the county boards
shall be composed of voters, legalized voters, so women are forbidden
to be on boards of education. You are very much surprised that you
find that Tennessee’s illiteracy is emormous. It does
not surprise me, for a state that will not make use of its educated
women to improve its schools will never get out of the bottom of the
line of illiteracy. So I wish you would look into that school law,
and see that women are allowed on school boards.
I know I am at the end
of my time—not at the end of my subject if I had all day to
talk to you. But at the end of your patience, I want to speak to you
about a law made last year. You know that even a woman’s wages
have not been hers, and when she had a bad husband—men are not
all perfect—he would get her wages and use them all for drink
and she was left without any.
Now our legislature has
made a law that any woman who will sign a paper saying that she is
dependent upon her labor for the support of herself and her child—and
she has to bring in the child—then an employer must p pay her
wages to anybody else. They mean her husband, but they are afraid of
hurting his feelings. Now see what difficulty that puts a woman in.
She has to sign a paper which disgraces her husband. You have
contributed a great deal to family disharmony in this state by such a
law. Uh, I mean the legislature, not you.
Why shouldn’t a
woman’s wages be her own, whether she has to support herself
and children or not? We should have a law that a woman’s wages
belong to her, and are nobody else’s. Gentlemen, I want you to
see that that law is changed.
I have not asked for
anything radical. I have simply asked you to appoint a committee that
will investigate all these laws, and will recommend to the
legislature such legislation that will put Tennessee in the column of
those states that are generous and just to women.
I thank you very much
for giving me this time. (4)
Narrator/Host:
To Lizzie Crozier French we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host:
That same spirit of justice drove our final guest to work for civil
rights and to protect the environment. Let me introduce to you Verda
Elvira Dowdie Home from Alabama.
Verda Elvira Dowdie
Home (1905-1987)
I’m Verda Home,
originally from Utah but now from Fairhope, Alabama. The blue crab
brought me to the South. I fell in love here and this is now my home.
After graduating from the University of Utah, I was doing graduate
work at the University of Minnesota, when I came to Gulf Shores,
Alabama, to study the blue crab. That was where I met my husband.
The three passions of
my life are the environment, social justice, and Unitarian
Universalism.
I helped found the
Alabama Conservancy and Bartram Trails, and I’ve been an active
member of the Audubon Society and other environmental preservation
groups. I love the woods of Alabama and spend as much time there as
possible pursuing my interest in botany and biology.
Being a liberal in my
part of the South hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I
founded the Unitarian Fellowship in Fairhope in the early 1950’s.
I’ve been active in state, regional, and national Unitarian,
and later Unitarian Universalist, affairs. I even served on the board
of the ULI Service Committee.
I’ve also been
active in the League for Women Voters and Common Cause. And I
participated in civil rights marches in the 1960s. That participation
cost me my job as a biology researcher at the University of South
Alabama. But I’m a firm believer that structural changes must
be made in our political system in order for environmental and social
change to be possible.
As a teacher at a
private progressive school in Fairhope, called The School of Organic
Education, I’ve been able to share with my students my love of
nature and scientific truth. It is my fervent hope to inspire others
to continue the work for environmental and social justice.
Narrator/Host:
To Verda D. Home we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
Narrator/Host: I
want to thank all of these women for joining us here today. Your
stories inspire us to continue the work you have begun, to hold on
when times are tough, and to welcome the future, knowing there is a
life to be led, a path to follow.
Today we have met only
a few of the notable Unitarian, Universalist, and UU women from the
South whose lives inspire and empower us to seek and follow our call.
I invite you now to think of other notable UU women from the South
and to say aloud their names.
Narrator/Host:
To all of you we say:
Response:
Thank you for inspiring and empowering us to seek and follow our
common call.
CLOSINGSONG—”Look
to the Women,” by Ruth Pelham or “Standing Before Us,”
by Carole Etzler Eagleheart (available from the UU Women’s
Heritage Society)
CLOSING WORDS—
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Unitarian (1825-1911)
Oh,
sisters, kind and loving,
When
your gifts to me shall tell
Of
the hours swiftly passing,
May
I learn to use them well.
And
write upon them records
For
the brighter world above,
Of
a life endowed with power,
And
transcribed with deeds of love.5
EXTINGUISHING THE
CHALICE
And now, as we
extinguish this chalice, this symbol of the common spirit that calls
us forward in our lives, may its light go with us to illuminate the
path ahead. May the flame of our heritage light the way through
whatever present challenges we face that we may truly live lives
endowed with power and transcribed with deeds of love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This service was
created by Dorothy Emerson and Janet Bowering, with additional
resources provided by Sarah Barber-Braun, Faith Grover Scott, Jean K.
Lacey, Frank Laraway, Richard D. Home, Carol Simmons, and the
Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society. Many thanks to
all!
For tape and music
information about “The Ones Who’ve Gone Before”
contact: Dorie Ellzey Blesoff, Phone: 312-816-5299 e-mail:
dorie@groupro.com
“Look to the
Women” is recorded as “Look to the People” on Under
One Sky (Gentle Wind, tape/CD) and Look to the Peoplei
(Flying Fish, tape). These recordings may be ordered from Ruth
Peiham, P0 Box 6024, Albany, NY 12206, Phone: 518-462-8714
NOTES:
1 Frances Watkins
Harper, “For the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the ‘Old
Folks’ Home,” Annual Report for the Home for the Aged
and Infirm Colored People, 1889, 13-14.
2 Smith Foster, ed., A
Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader (NY:
Feminist Press, 1990),
3-4.
3 Athalia L. J. Irwin,
“From Gethsemane to Heaven,” Bouquet of Verses
(Privately printed, 1905), 9-14.
4 ‘In Jean K.
Lacey, “Mrs. French Speaks to the Tennessee Bar Association,”
play performed at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Aug. 26,
1995.
5 Frances Watkins
Harper, “To White Ribbons of Maine Who Gave to Me Their Blessed
Gifts,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 15, 1890.
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