by Frances Harper Note the placement of the newspaper poem next to accounts of the not-at-all “free” land in the wake of the Dred Scott decision finalized the previous year. The poem Make me a grave where’er you will, In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill; Make it among
by Frances Harper Note the placement of the poem between the work of a particular time and space (the poem “A ‘God-Speed’” written “for Frederick Douglass’ Paper” in “Bolton, Eng.” on “Nov., 16, 1853.”) and the work of a fictive time and space (the short story by novelist Fanny Fern).
by Frances Harper Note the placement of the newspaper poem next to sections like “Letters from the People,” which mostly discuss events that occurred in the preceding month or week. Nested within this context, the past verb tense of “The Slave Auction” takes on a very different – potentially literal
