Learning to Read

By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825–1911

Very soon the Yankee teachers

Came down and set up school;

But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—

It was agin’ their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide

Book learning from our eyes;

Knowledge did’nt agree with slavery—

’Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal

A little from the book.

And put the words together,

And learn by hook or crook.

I remember Uncle Caldwell,

Who took pot liquor fat

And greased the pages of his book,

And hid it in his hat.

And had his master ever seen

The leaves upon his head,

He’d have thought them greasy papers,

But nothing to be read.

And there was Mr. Turner’s Ben,

Who heard the children spell,

And picked the words right up by heart,

And learned to read ’em well.

Well, the Northern folks kept sending

The Yankee teachers down;

And they stood right up and helped us,

Though Rebs did sneer and frown.

And I longed to read my Bible,

For precious words it said;

But when I begun to learn it,

Folks just shook their heads,

And said there is no use trying,

Oh! Chloe, you’re too late;

But as I was rising sixty,

I had no time to wait.

So I got a pair of glasses,

And straight to work I went,

And never stopped till I could read

The hymns and Testament.

Then I got a little cabin

A place to call my own—

And I felt independent

As the queen upon her throne.

Source: African-American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology (University of Illinois Press, 1992)

Biography

Born in Baltimore, poet, fiction writer, journalist, and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was the only child of free African American parents. She was raised by her aunt and uncle after her mother died when Frances was three years old. She attended the Academy for Negro Youth, a school run by her uncle, until the age of 13, and then found domestic work in a Quaker household, where she had access to a wide range of . . .

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