Mary Elizabeth Ashe Lee | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1851-01-12)January 12, 1851 Mobile, Alabama, US |
| Died | January 22, 1932(1932-01-22) (aged 81) |
| Resting place | Wilberforce, Ohio |
| Alma mater | Wilberforce University |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, educator, and churchwoman |
| Spouse | Benjamin F. Lee (married 1872) |
Mary Elizabeth Ashe Lee (12 January 1851 – 22 January 1932) was an African-American writer,[1] educator,[2] and churchwoman.[3]
Mary Elizabeth Ashe was born inMobile, Alabama on 12 January 1851, the daughter of Simon S. and Adelia M. Ashe.[4] Her parents were comfortably off, and her father was prominent in business.[4] In 1860 he purchased a farm in Ohio, near toWilberforce University, where the family settled.[4]
Mary graduated in science in 1873, alongside classmates includingHallie Quinn Brown.[4] Recognised for her skill in writing, Ashe was appointed to write a "class ode", the first in the history of Wilberforce.[4] Following graduation, she taught in public schools inGalveston, Texas, having previously taught two years in Mobile.[4]
On 30 December 1872, Mary marriedBenjamin F. Lee, Professor of Pastoral Theology at Wilberforce, and later its president.[5][4] He became Bishop of theAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church.[4] The couple had six children.[4] Mary E. Ashe Lee was involved with the Ladies' Christian Union Association, theWoman's Christian Temperance Union, and the Women's Mite Missionary Society.[4]
Lee died on 22 January 1932, and was buried in Stevenson Cemetery,Wilberforce, Ohio.[3]
Mary E. Ashe Lee contributed several articles to theChristian Recorder and to theA.M.E. Quarterly Review.[4] She also edited a column inRingwood's Journal, a fashion paper, called the "King's Daughters' Column".[4] In 1892, she was elected vice president of the journal.[4]
Lee's best known poem was "Afmerica", originally published in 1886 inHampton Institute'sSouthern Workman.[6] In 1998, an extract was part ofNineteenth-century American Women Poets: An Anthology, which called it "remarkable and powerful".[2] In 2017, the poem was republished inThe Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers.[6][7] Co-editor and academicHollis Robbins said of "Afmerica":
It's a remarkable poem, insisting upon the central role of black women in the making of America, as if she's talking toTocqueville directly.
Paula Bennett has written that the publication of "Afmerica" inSouthern Workman represented "a rare departure from its usually conservative approach to racial and social questions", as the poem "confronts one of the nineteenth century’s most controversial social issues, “amalgamation,” or the sexual mixing of whites with peoples of color."[8][9]