SOURCE: "Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1824-1911" in Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the Nineteenth Century, University of Illinois Press, 1974, pp. 62-74.

In the following essay, Sherman explains that while the poems in Harper's early collections may seem maudlin to modern readers, Harper should nonetheless be remembered as a black poet who broke away from purely racial protest themes to treat other national issues of significance.

In an 1859 essay, "Our Greatest Want," Miss Watkins declared that neither gold, intelligence, nor talent were the most pressing needs of her people; rather, "We want more soul, a higher cultivation of all spiritual faculties. We need more unselfishness, earnestness and integrity…. We need men and women whose hearts are the homes of a high and lofty enthusiasm, and a noble devotion to the cause of emancipation, who are ready and willing to lay time, talent and money on the altar of universal freedom...