We Are All Bound Up Together

Interlude from "Lifting As We Climb"
Music by Joan Szymko
Narrative and lyrics by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)
Speaker: Toni Redmond
Performed by the Seattle Women's Chorus, Paul Caldwell, conductor

“We Are All Bound Up Together” is the stand alone interlude from Lifting As We Climb, a 30 minute choral narrative scored for women’s choir. Suffragists come to life and previously hidden voices of African American women fighting for the vote are heard. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was one such black suffragist. “We Are All Bound Up Together” Harper gave a powerful speech at a National Women’s Rights convention in 1866, which is the source of the lyric. The context of her remarks was the post Civil War fracturing of the women’s suffrage movement over the 15th Amendment which granted black men access to the elective franchise— before white women. Lifting As We Climb looks back in time, but it also explores the present day and anticipates a future that will require a diligent, informed public ready to fight for equality, democracy and the right to vote.