Frances Harper was a black woman who taught in Columbus, Ohio, but in 1853 became a travelling lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. She often read her poetry at these public meetings, including the extremely popular Bury Me in a Free Land.
Make me a grave wher’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a loft hill;
Make it among earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow upon my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom…
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASharper.htm