Jonathan P. Baird

I wanted to share this poem written by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) who was an abolitionist, an Underground Railroad conductor, a writer and cofounder of the National Association of Colored Women.

Make me a grave where’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of coffee gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

If I saw young girls from their mother’s arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.