Paul Formisano

Dr. Romano

English 540

10 February 2009

Rhetorical Strategies of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Ida B. Wells

            In Shirley Wilson Logan’s With Pen and Voice, African American female abolitionists like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Ida Wells use a myriad of rhetorical techniques—many akin to those Jacqueline Bacon discusses in The Humblest May Stand Forth—to challenge the race prejudices of nineteenth century America.  In Harpers’ two speeches, “Duty to Dependent Races” and “Woman’s Political Future,” we find an emphasis on the topos of the “mystery of race” and “true womanhood”.  In “Duty,” Harper speaks of three claims to which blacks are entitled to defend their situation.  She acknowledges the essentialist stereotypes of the day regarding blacks which suggest that they are “poor, irresponsible, and with no idea of the integrity of suffrage” (37).  And instead of initially denying such ideas, she considers their possibility asking “why is [the negro] ignorant?” (37).  While it appears that she buys into this stereotype, she quickly attacks it showing how any ignorance or poverty are a direct result of the sin of slavery (38).  Thus, she relies on perceptions of her race to critique and condemn. 

            Appeals to true-womanhood exist in this speech as well as in “Woman’s Political Future.”  She explains, “the elements of a nation’s weakness must ever be found at the hearthstone” (45).  Like her use of essentialist beliefs regarding race, she acknowledges the woman’s role in the home to make her larger argument that women need to be involved not only in the private sphere but the public as well.  “The result,” she says, “will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy” (44).  Thus, home and society (like men and women) are intimately linked; neglect one and the other suffers.  This use of time-honored beliefs regarding women’s roles in the home applied to the larger national family demonstrates significant skill and mastery of her subject.        

            For Wells and “Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” narrative is the rhetorical tool of choice to condemn the atrocious acts happening in the American South during Reconstruction.  Not only does she relate the events surrounding the murders involving the “People’s Grocery,” she tells of other murders by lynching in Texas to reveal this widespread practice.  Likewise, Wells emphasizes her own personal experiences regarding the threats she has faced in response to her publication.  Having published an advisory statement of warning to those in the South that further claims blaming blacks for raping white women would eventually lead to “a conclusion

. . . which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women” (87).  By relating the gruesome facts and truth of these murders along with her own experiences facing the threats of a hypocritical nation, Wells provides a contradictory view to the reports in the papers and the claims that the blacks merited such punishments.  And as a woman, her condemnation of the immorality of the guilty white parties is all the more stinging—she resists white stereotypes of blacks as passionate and immoral, turning the stereotypes back on themselves.  Having established her ethos at the beginning through her explanation of her role in education and her “honest conviction,” Wells takes the moral high-road as an example of “true-womanhood,” making her aggressive condemnation of white wrongs possible. 

            Not surprisingly, the rhetorical situation is paramount in the construction of these three speeches.  Harper’s addresses to the National Council of Women and at the World’s Congress of Representative Women are shaped by (among many other factors): 1) her desire to critique and correct white female prejudice; 2) her desire to forward women’s rights regardless of color as race plays little role in this speech.  For Wells, the rhetorical situation is shaped by the prevalence of lynchings and the white press justifying such acts.  Her emotionally tempered and factual speech are appropriately suited for an audience of white clergy and prominent Bostonians who would be more persuaded by one adopting their discourse than by a speech from a black woman whose speech would otherwise fit the racial stereotypes they may possess.