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By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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.
 


n/a

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

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Poet Bio

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Born in Baltimore, poet, fiction writer, journalist, and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, was the only child of free African American parents. She became a traveling speaker on the abolitionist circuit and she also helped slaves escape through Underground Railroad and wrote frequently for anti-slavery newspapers, earning her reputation as the mother of African-American journalism. During Reconstruction, Harper was an activist for civil rights, women’s rights, and educational opportunity for all. She was superintendent of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, co-founder and vice-president of the National Association of Colored Women, and a member of the American Women’s Suffrage Association. Harper was also the director of the American Association of Colored Youth. See More By This Poet

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