Iola Leroy:
Methods- Iola Leroy; Or, Shadows Uplifted was not printed and circulated using Harper’s usual methods; she frequented newspapers, or self-sold when she spoke at conferences, and Iola’s story was published as a single volume. The novel was was a new foray for Harper’s into the genres of plantation fiction as well as romance. The main character varies greatly from the dark-skinned protagonists of her past short stories, as the heroine of Iola Leroy; Or, Shadows Uplifted, Iola Leroy, is not “bronze” like Harper. Iola has a black experience that is intentionally accessible and palatable for white American, or, for people who might be a part of systems of white supremacy and misogyny who Harper— elsewhere— spoke directly against. Instead, through Iola’s story, Harper seeks a more broad audience by using unradical methods (unradical story-telling, and the unradical use of a light-skinned protagonist) to tactfully carve a larger space for her radical beliefs.
Iola Leroy and Harper:
Beliefs-
Iola Leroy: Or, Shadows Uplifted is not just about Iola. It is about a black community, and it includes varied narratives from very different women. Each one showcases the unique, valuable experiences of black women and each women— in dialog— expresses Harper’s radical views.
Aunt Linda-
Is an illiterate women who is freed during the novel. She makes decisions for her family based on evidence and thought that results in success. She makes a decision to buy rather than rent their house, and her good decision improves her families life. Aunt Linda says, “Dere’s muffin goes ober de debil’s back dat don’t come under his belly!” which is a dialectic restatement of Harper’s knowledge that what goes around comes around. This sentiment echoes Harper’s 1875 speech to the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, called “The Great Problem to be Solved”. She said “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul”. Both statements— Frances Harper’s, and Aunt Linda’s restatement— are radical because they expose bigotry as an evil hurting everyone. The systems alive in America to keep black people from success, Harper and her character argue, are keeping white people and the nation from any kind of true success as well.
Mrs. Delaney-
is a young, dark skinned, well educated and eloquent women. She is shown holding her own, speaking up, about equality in an academic conversation. She tells Iola that her life is “invested with too much intrinsic worth, for me to be the least humiliated by the indignities that beggarly souls can inflict”. Mrs. Delaney’s confidence and self worth portrayed as such positive qualities is a statement all in itself, but this dialog helps highlight how important Mrs. Delaney’s belief in herself (regardless of her skin color or her sex) is too Harper making a radical feminist statement within the Unradical Iola Leroy: Or, Shadows Uplifted. In Harper’s1893 speech titled “Women’s Political Future,” Harper says that “if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America,” a comment on the unacceptable abandonment of black women by white feminists. Harper knew that space for black women was hard to carve, and she knew who to blame. Radically, she calls-out white feminists for their unacceptable abandonment of black women both in speeches delivered radically and through Mrs. Delaney, in the unradical, palatable-for-white-audiences Iola Leroy: Or, Shadows Uplifted.
Iola-
goes through a harrowing journey from free childhood, slave, to free black women. She owns her black identity proudly, choosing to claim it because of the benefits the black community brings to her. She says that the best blood in her veins is the black blood, and constantly chooses to own her blackness despite the challenges that come with it. However, she sees being black as an advantage, the only way to live her truth. Despite romantic advances of a white doctor who offers her a life of wealth and white-passing, Iola insists he can’t understand her black experience, can’t appreciate her black community, and she always turns him down in favor of the love of her black community, living truthfully, and continuing her work to education other black people. Iola is a vehicle for Harper to make statements about America, and despite existing within plantation fiction unradically published for white audiences, Iola manages to unveil ugly systems of misogyny and racism and offers radical rebuttal of dominant ideologies at the time of publishing. America’s white supremacists are wrong, according to Harper and Iola. They claim being white to be preferable, better than, but Iola has the unique experience of both being a free white person and being an enslaved– then freed– black women and she chooses being black.
Harper
Methods-
Aside from the Iola Leroy: Or, Shadows Uplifted Harper’s work was written, published, and spoken mostly for Christen, abolitionist, or feminist audiences. She has many titles, notable “the Mother of African American Journalism” and the “bronze muse” of the abolition movement. Her prominence is, of course, related to the quality of her poetry, speeches, and fiction, but is also because she was a pioneer. The Poetry Foundation attributes to her the first short story published by an African American, and she was writing succinct critique of topics like the male/female double standard discussed by feminists today, almost two centuries ago. She was a vocal, strong voice during her career within the black-women’s radical tradition of testimonial, and the act of making art as a women and a black person— both of which disqualified her from such intellectual pursuits, according to the white men of america— was an act of radicalism in and of itself.
Her methods for activism were radical because she did not speak for or to white America. Her work was for and about the experience of being black in America, being a women in America, and about the unique placelessness of being both black and a women. Her commitment to both art and sharing her radical message carved Harper a legacy and carved a larger, and growing, space for the testimonial, poetry, fiction, and activism for her own black female voice and those that would come after.