The Freedom Bell: An Evening with Frances Harper at the BMA

Name: The Freedom Bell: An Evening with Frances Harper at the BMA
Start: 2026-04-09T18:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-04-09T21:00:00-04:00
Location: 10 Art Museum Dr, Baltimore, MD, United States, Maryland 21218

Schedule

Thu Apr 09 2026 at 06:00 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

10 Art Museum Dr, Baltimore, MD, United States, Maryland 21218 | Baltimore, MD

Join us for the sixth annual Donald V. Bentley Memorial Lecture, an evening of art and history, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth, presented by the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts.
“The Freedom Bell” evening opens with an address by historian Dr. Martha S. Jones, who has evoked Harper in all of her published works. The audience will hear African American spirituals performed by Baltimore’s Jonathan Pettus Chorale, which includes many alumni of the celebrated Morgan State University Choir. With a backdrop of music by Peabody Institute cellists, a post-address reception will feature food, drinks, and a pop-up exhibit designed by Dr. Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson, lead curator of the BHCLA’s Curating and Archiving Black Baltimore project.
Each year, the Center invites distinguished intellectuals and arts practitioners to address topical, historical, or philosophical issues connecting the work of the arts to the renewal and revitalization of civic life.
The Donald Bentley Annual Memorial Lecture is a unique platform to drive debate and critical reflection on the role of the arts in our everyday lives and in our imagining of a future just world.
The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and assistive listening devices are available. Please see artbma.org/visit/accessibility for additional resources to support your visit.
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Schedule
5:45 p.m. – Auditorium doors open
6:15–7 p.m. – Presentation on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper by Dr. Martha S. Jones
7–7:30 p.m. – Performance by The Jonathan Pettus Chorale
7:30–9 p.m. – Culture Reception with live cellist performance and pop up exhibition in Fox Court. Food and drink will be available for purchase.
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Tickets
Free. Registration is encouraged.
Please only sign up for this popular event if you are certain you will attend.
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About Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Although Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born free in Baltimore in 1825, she could never escape the misery of slavery. She lived on Camden Street, within earshot of the coffles of enslaved people marching from the jails Pratt Street to the wharves for steamboats headed to the cotton fields of the deep South. A student at her uncle’s famed Watkins Academy, Frances Watkins lived in a world of books, academic exhibitions, and political activism. The African American adults in her circle went to the public courts and aggressively pursued their civil rights. Even as a teenage seamstress and domestic, she had lofty ambitions. In 1846, Frances Watkins launched the book of poetry Forest Leaves here in Baltimore City, making her the second published Black woman poet in American history.
Frustrated by the punishing logic of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Watkins family left Baltimore. Frances moved to Ohio, married Fenton Harper, and became an abolitionist writer, and then a suffragette. Just as the resources and networks around her helped shape Harper into an abolitionist, poet, organizer, and suffragist, her own writings, speeches, and teaching helped shape the thinking and actions of her generation and beyond.
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About the Donald V. Bentley Memorial Lecture
The Donald Bentley Annual Memorial Lecture is the Billie Holiday Center’s annual capstone public lecture. Each year, the Center invites a distinguished arts practitioner and intellectual to address topical, historical, or philosophical issues connecting the work of the arts to the renewal and revitalization of civic life. The event is named in honor of one of Baltimore’s promising young leaders who lost their life in the violence crisis that has been endemic to the city for more than thirty years. Through rich dialogue and intentional engagement, guests will be pushed to contemplate the necessity of art and creation to a positive public sphere.
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About the Johns Hopkins University Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts
Founded in 2017 by Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and Baltimore native Lawrence Jackson, The Billie Holiday Center for the Liberation Arts (BHCLA) is an initiative designed to foster reparative links between Johns Hopkins University and the historic African American communities of Baltimore. Through documenting and disseminating the unique history of African American life, letters, and art in Baltimore, the Center seeks to foster opportunities for robust engagement amongst the Black population that regularly attends the city’s historic Black churches, the residents of West Baltimore whose communities have experienced little redevelopment or economic growth, Black students and faculty at Hopkins, and Black artists across Baltimore.
BHCLA realizes this mission through two broad channels of engagement and impact–the archives and the arts. We serve Baltimore by promoting the collection and preservation of African American oral histories and print material culture, and creating opportunities to connect artists and audiences. Patronizing off-campus venues, we celebrate our offerings in scholarship and the arts to historically vital and currently underserved communities in Baltimore.
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Participants
Dr. Martha S. Jones
Dr. Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and Professor at the SNF Agora Institute, has written extensively about Frances Harper in works like her 2020 Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted for Equality for All, and her 2018 Baltimore-based Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. Her 2007 book, All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900, borrows its title from an 1866 address Harper gave at the National Women’s Rights Convention in New York. “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity,” Harper said, “and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.”
Dr. Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson
Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson, PhD is the lead curator for Curating and Archiving Black Baltimore, an interdisciplinary position between Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts, where she is currently developing two exhibitions: a traveling exhibit on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and an online exhibition on Historic Black Churches in Baltimore (2026). As a Postdoctoral Fellow for Africana Collections for Inheritance Baltimore, she served as lead curator of Ethel’s Place: Celebrating Ethel Ennis at the George Peabody Library (2023–2024), co-curated a portable exhibition on Billie Holiday’s early life in Baltimore with Lawrence Jackson, PhD, and served as managing curator of Bearing Witness: Photographing Black Families in Baltimore (co-curated with Tonika Berkley and Angela Koukoui, MLIS) at the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center (2024). Previously, she was a program manager for Washington Performing Arts. She earned her PhD in ethnomusicology from Indiana University in 2018, with a dissertation on the representation of gospel music in film.
The Jonathan Pettus Chorale
The Jonathan Pettus Chorale was founded in 2016 with a mission to promote musical excellence through the art of choral performance. The ensemble is composed of accomplished musicians and soloists who have performed at renowned venues nationwide, including the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Dallas Opera House.
In April 2023, the Chorale was featured in the Inaugural GospelFest with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Associate Conductor Jonathan Rush. The ensemble also presents its own concert series and frequently serves as a guest choir for churches and community events in Baltimore.
Recent recordings include Portraits of Christmas (2023) and the single Call His Name (2024). Spanning classical, spiritual, and gospel repertoire, the Chorale remains committed to its motto: “Ministering to God’s People, Through Song.”
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Image: Terry Thompson, The Poet. Digital oil and oil stick using a stylus on iPhone, 20″ x 20″, printed on archival paper. 1 of 1 executed in 2025.
Terry Thompson has created a significant body of work using his iPhone to make digital paintings, which are subsequently published as archival pigment prints. These digital works often feature figurative portraits of women and famous figures that are rarely seen in his oil-on-canvas paintings.