Fannie Barrier Williams and the Synecdochal Whole

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This exhibit focuses on the lives and works of Mary Church Terrell, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. I present these figures to chart a larger whole that they represent synecdochally. I follow Denise Burgher’s formulation of a synecdochal figure as one whose presence in a historical record suggests the unrecorded presence of others from her community; thus, Wells-Barnett, Terrell, and Harper serve as representative of a larger whole–other Black women teachers, writers, speakers, and activists who would have worked at the same time as these women, but their work or names remain unknown. I focus on certain aspects of their lives, writings, and activism with the intention of drawing out commonalities while maintaining their individuality. You can learn more about our group’s strategies for literary recovery on the Recovery is Not Innocent page. While many of the achievements discussed here took place after 1884, the ways they intertwine with each other speak to the importance of trying to imagine what they might have accomplished together as part of the Women’s Department at the New Orleans World’s Fair.

While conducting research on each of these women individually, I was surprised at how naturally the connections presented themselves to me. Without having to search extensively, I witnessed how the process of researching one Black woman’s life in this period revealed networks of collaboration and influence, overlapping memberships in multiple organizations, and a web of deep friendships. These networks are further evidence of the extent to which the white organizers of the New Orleans World’s Fair impoverished their own lives and work by failing to network with Black women.

To better highlight the connections among these women, I have organized all of their stories in five sections: Early Life, Teaching Background, Anti-Lynching Campaigns, The National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and Further Reading or Literary Works. Each of these sections is organized as it makes sense with each woman’s story; the only section which they do not all three share is “Anti-Lynching Campaigns” because Harper was not involved in anti-lynch law activism while Wells-Barnett and Terrell were. These sections recognize Terrell, Harper, and Wells-Barnett for their inspiring individual efforts towards equality and justice, while demonstrating that it is precisely these efforts that connect them to each other and make them representative of a synecdochal whole of other Black women teachers, writers, and activists who worked during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Because these women worked as anti-lynch law, anti-racist, and anti-sexist activists, this piece quotes violent descriptions of lynchings, racist physical and verbal attacks, and the feelings which come with this intense, personal work; please be aware and take care of yourself as you read. In piecing together the figurative quilt of historical literary activism, the stories of these three women reflect the extent to which the exclusion of Black women from the 1884 New Orleans Women’s Department affected not only a wide range of individuals alive in the same period, but also our current historical knowledge of the period.