“There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”**

As we enter uncharted waters as a nation, the Stowe Center for Literary Activism continues to nurture space for open, honest, and respectful sharing of ideas—especially as those ideas relate to historical systems of oppression, systems that persist today. We also continue to explore and celebrate systems of resistance, agency, and activism, which also, thank goodness, persist.

Our mission is to encourage social justice and literary activism by exploring the legacy of Harriet Beecher Stowe and all who advocate hope and freedom then and now. We envision a world in which engagement leads to empathy, empowerment, and change for good.

We acknowledge the oppressive system of white supremacy which is a tenacious but surmountable detriment to the greater good of our valuable, diverse communities. We work to expose and counter white supremacy by exploring broader, deeper, truer histories that amplify authentic stories of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples that have been marginalized, hidden, or forgotten. These are true stories of enslaved, formerly enslaved, and disenfranchised individuals who against the pervasiveness of a culture that denied them access to the basic rights of people asserted their humanity, learned how to read and write, educated themselves, resisted bondage and genocide, and above all fought dehumanization.

We interweave these histories into better-known histories—such as those of Stowe and her family—to promote a deep and nuanced picture of the past, which we can embrace as a robust, multi-faceted American story.  

This active pursuit of a truer American story gives us hope.  

As we continue examine our history and expand our collective understanding of American people, we want to amplify the ideas and calls to action of American literary activists:

Josiah Henson: “The truth has never been half-told; the story would be too horrible to hear. I could fill this book with cases that have come under my own experience and observation, by which I could prove that the slaveholder could and did break every one of the ten commandments with impunity.”

Harriet Jacobs: “Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!”

Harriet Beecher Stowe: “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

Dr. Bettina Love, 2024 Stowe Prize Winner: “When Black people have dreamed big, organized effectively, and fought hard enough that justice and grand-scale change seem not only possible but imminent—the insidious pushback to this comes in the form of reform.”

Dr. Ruha Benjamin, recipient of a 2024 MacArthur Genius Grant, 2023 Stowe Prize Winner: “Racism … helps to produce … fragmented imagination, misery for some, monopolies for others. This means that for those of us who want to construct a different social reality, one grounded in justice and joy, we can’t only critique the underside, but we also have to wrestle with the deep investments, the desire even, that many people have for social domination.”

*Clint Smith, 2022 Stowe Prize Winner: “In an effort to create a culture within my classroom where students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, I have four core principles posted on the board that sits in the front of my class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year: read critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth.

**Bryan Stevenson, 2017 Stowe Prize Winner: “There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity. But simply punishing the broken–walking away from them or hiding them from sight–only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”

Civility and a better future demand that we talk with each other and that we listen to each other. We must read, learn, write, speak up and speak out. We need to educate ourselves, do the work, and never just accept what is told to us as truth.

And we must treat HOPE as an action that builds a better world.

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Karen Fisk is the Executive Director at the Stowe Center for Literary Activism.

More about Hope

The words of mother-daughter activist team of Harriet and Louisa Jacobs speak to the importance of hope, collective action, and education—even in the darkest moments of U.S. history.

Harriet and Louisa are a mother and daughter not only survived enslavement, self-liberated, and went on to speak publicly about some of the most horrific experiences of enslaved women, they also engaged in direct action relief work during the Civil War.

After bearing witness to some of the most hideous violence and deprivation in U.S. history, during a period of our deepest national division, what did they do? They built schools! (The Jacobs School in Alexandra, Virginia and the Lincoln School in Savannah, Georgia). 

In 1862, during the Civil War, both Harriet & Louisa traveled south to Washington DC (and then Alexandria, Virginia) to become relief workers for Black freedom-seekers.

Harriet Jacobs, in an account of her experiences called “Life Among the Contrabands,” published in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator on September 5th, 1862, wrote:

“Amid all this sadness, we sometimes would hear a shout of joy. Some mother had come in, and found her long-lost child; some husband his wife. Brothers and sisters meet. Some, without knowing it, had lived years within twenty miles of each other. A word about the schools. It is pleasant to see that eager group of old and young, striving to learn their A, B, C, and Scripture sentences. Their great desire is to learn to read.”

In 1864, after extensive fundraising (more collective action!), Harriet and Louisa Jacobs open the Jacobs School. Louisa Jacobs wrote this letter about it to Lydia Maria Child, which was then published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on April 16th, 1864:

“On the 11th of January we opened school in the new school-house, with seventy-five scholars. Now, [in March,] we have two hundred and twenty-five. Slavery has not crushed out the… spirits of these children. Fun lurks in the corners of their eyes, dimples their mouths, tingles at their fingers’ ends, and is, like a torpedo, ready to explode at the slightest touch… [They have] a generous nature. They never allow an older and stronger scholar to impose upon a younger and weaker one; and when they happen to have any little delicacies, they are very ready to share them with others… You would be astonished at the progress many of them have made in this short time. Many who less than three months ago scarcely knew the A. B. C. are now reading and spelling in words of two or three syllables. When I look at these bright little boys, I often wonder whether there is not some Frederick Douglass among them, destined to do honor to his race in the future.”

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Brenna Harvey is Education and Visitor Center Coordinator for the Stowe Center for Literary Activism