Exploring racism in the mid-1800s
Panel seeks statue of historic author
"Why was I made? Why can't I die? Oh, what have I to live for? No one cares for me only to get my work. And I feel sick; who cares for that? Work as long as I can stand, and then fall down and lay there till I can get up. No mother, father, brother or sister to care for me, and then it is, You lazy nigger, lazy nigger -- all because I am black! Oh, if I could die!"
-- Frado in Harriet E. Wilson's "Our Nig"
They were cries of a "free" young black girl in the mid-1800s, who was often beaten by the mistress of a two-story white house in a small New England town. They were cries that were repeated in an autobiographical-inspired book the young girl wrote as a woman in a desperate attempt to raise money to support her frail son.
And they were cries that were largely ignored by Northern abolitionists who may not have wanted to believe that even in New England, in families seemingly sympathetic to their cause, such brutal racism existed.
Nearly a century and a half after Harriet E. Wilson wrote her book, "Our Nig," which was based on her upbringing by a white family in Milford, N.H., selectmen there Monday night approved a request to erect a bronze monument in Bicentennial Park to celebrate her spirit and her accomplishment as the first African-American woman believed to have a novel published in English.
"She will be restored as a historical daughter of New Hampshire, as a pioneer," said Gloria Henry, a member of the board of directors for The Harriet Wilson Project, a nonprofit organization based in Milford, which is seeking greater recognition of the author's work in the Granite State. "She will no longer be forgotten."
Drawings for the monument have not yet been commissioned. Members of the one-year-old nonprofit organization envision a life-size bronze sculpture that will capture the essence of the author's spirit, her strong will, and her gender.
It will be impressionistic in nature, members say. No one knows what Wilson looks like. No pictures have ever been uncovered, but based on her book, they do know she at one time had long luxurious curls (before her mistress cut them off) and a light complexion (her mother was white, her father black).
They also would like the monument to have a special feature -- some kind of sound.
"Her voice was silenced for so long," said JerriAnne Boggis, a Milford resident who is the director of The Harriet Wilson Project. "It would be nice if every time the wind blew through it, it would be her chance to speak so she will never be silenced again."
The nonprofit organization estimates it will need to raise $30,000 for the sculpture, and the group will probably look to the Harriet Tubman monument in Boston or the Pollyanna sculpture in Littleton, N.H., for inspiration. The group intends to pull together a committee representing various interests of the town to select an artist.
"I think it is a really exciting project, and I'm happy to support it," said Nancy Amato, chairwoman of the Milford Board of Selectmen and a member of the project's board of directors. "I feel badly she was treated badly, and that upsets me. I wish she had a better experience here."
The monument is another milestone in Wilson's emerging legacy, which began with the late-1970s rediscovery of her book by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who stumbled upon it in a New York bookstore.
Since then, the book, roughly 140 pages in length, has been republished twice, most recently two years ago. Its full title reads something like a headline that might have appeared on a newspaper expos from that era on Northern racism: "Our Nig; Or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a two-story white house, north. Showing that slavery's shadows fall even there."
But the story of the young mulatto girl named Alfrado, or Frado, who was forced into servitude after her white mother abandoned her at a farmer's home, was not one that many abolitionists of that era wanted to hear. Even today, the story often sparks debate among college students and literary historians on its unflattering portrayal of the abolitionist movement and Christianity, and Wilson's use of such a racially charged word in the title.
"Her story is not different from a slave narrative. It's an oppression that is continued because of skin color," said Mary Lou Kete, an associate professor of English at the University of Vermont, who is working on a book-length project on interracial intimacies in the free states. "Her book has caused people to rethink the story of African-Americans in New England."
Wilson published the book in 1859 with her own money while living in the Boston area, and was believed to have been in her early 30s. It includes three testimonials on behalf of the author in back of the book, encouraging people to buy the book to help her support her son.
Sadly, though, five months after publication, her 7-year-old son died in a poorhouse in Milford, and she disappeared from historical records a few years later. No one knows when she died or where.
"She had a book no one wanted to publish, and no one wanted to read it because it was uncomfortable," said Barbara A. White, the historian and research director for The Harriet Wilson Project whose 1993 article in American Literature on the author appears as an afterword in the most recent edition of "Our Nig." "It was an honest reporting of what was going on. It didn't help to save her son, but it has survived all these years."
A multiracial group of women in southern New Hampshire banded together two years ago to promote greater awareness of Wilson's book in the Granite State. It was a letter to the editor in Milford's weekly newspaper, The Cabinet, advocating against making the book mandatory high school reading, which galvanized the women.
They incorporated their group as a nonprofit organization with the secretary of state's office last year. They have held a series of book readings around the region, and in May will host three panel discussions on the author's life, with a kickoff event on May 2 at Milford Town Hall. The May 2 event, titled "Hearing from Harriet," will feature singing, re-enactments from the book, and an address by Gates.
The group also is advocating to have the book incorporated as mandatory reading at all public high schools in the state. Currently, the book appears as approved reading as part of the state's history curriculum standards.
"It's not just her story," Boggis said. "It's not just Milford's story or New Hampshire's story."
"It's everyone's story," said Claudette Williams, another board director for the project. 