CHRISTMAS EVE STORY

Fanny Jackson Coppin

A well-known educator, civic and religious activist, and feminist, Fanny Muriel Jackson was born enslaved in Washington, DC. Her freedom was purchased by Sarah Clark, her aunt. At a relatively young age, she was sent to live with another aunt in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she worked as a domestic. At the age of fourteen she moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where she was employed for six years as a servant in the home of George Henry Calvert, a writer and the great-grandson of Lord Baltimore, who settled Maryland. In Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching, Jackson wrote that it was during those years that she attended public school and became determined to “get an education and become a teacher of my people.”

Fanny Jackson passed the entrance examination and was admitted to the Rhode Island State Normal School at Bristol, where she excelled. Following graduation, she was accepted by Oberlin College, one of the few white institutions of higher learning that admitted African Americans. At Oberlin, she pursued the classical course, known as the gentleman’s course of study. The college did not prevent women from taking the classical course but did not advise it. As the course emphasized Latin, Greek, and mathematics, it was felt that women would not fare well.

Following her graduation from Oberlin, in 1865, Fanny accepted an appointment to teach at the Institute for Colored Youth, a school established in Philadelphia in 1837 by the Quakers. During the antebellum period, this school developed a reputation for excellent teachers, a classical curriculum, and the high quality of its graduates. The institute was a showplace, visited by interested persons from throughout the United States and Europe.

Contrary to the belief of many whites that blacks were inferior and suited only for menial labor, the Institute for Colored Youth proved that African Americans were quite capable of learning and could acquire a higher level of education. Fanny taught Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and served as principal of the girls’ high school department. She was delighted to teach children and see them master Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Xenophon’s Anabasis.

In 1869, the general principal of the institute, Ebenezer D. Bassett, was appointed minister to Haiti by President Ulysses S. Grant. Fanny Jackson replaced him as head principal, becoming the first black woman in the US to hold a position at that level in an educational institution. During her thirty-seven-year tenure at the institute, several students—future black leaders—came under Jackson’s tutelage, and she was influential in shaping some of the major patterns of black education in the late nineteenth century.

In 1881, Fanny married the Reverend Levi Jenkins Coppin, a noted minister and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Although she held membership in a Baptist church, Mrs. Coppin became involved in the AME Church, and she was active in the missionary field and as president of the Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society. In 1888, she was a delegate to the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World, held in London. At that meeting she spoke forcefully about the intelligence of African American women and the tremendous responsibilities they assumed in every endeavor, including missions. In 1893, she delivered the same message at the Chicago World’s Fair.

Although she is best remembered for her work in education, Fanny Jackson was also widely known as a writer, lecturer, and organizer in the black women’s club movement. “Christmas Eve Story” reflects her concerns for poor black children and illustrates the plight of many she came in daily contact with in the alleys and hovels where they resided in Philadelphia. This short story is written in the style of a fairy tale with an appeal to very young readers and listeners. It opens on Christmas Eve, 1879, and concludes on Christmas Eve, 1880. The references to Acorn Alley and the almshouse suggest a large city, most likely Philadelphia, where Fanny Jackson Coppin resided.

“Christmas Eve Story” was published in December 1880 in the Christian Recorder, the organ of the AME Church and one of the earliest black publications to publish the literary efforts of African Americans. Its diverse offerings attracted wide readership among black Methodists and appealed to a broad-based national African American audience. The story makes an appeal for the community to address the poverty experienced by so many black children who lived in filthy alleys infested with disease.

Christmas Eve Story

Once upon time, there was a little girl named Maggie Devins, and she had a brother named Johnny, just one year older than she. Here they both are. Now if they could they would get up and make you a bow. But dear me! We all get so fastened down in pictures that we have to keep as quiet as mice, or we’d tear the paper all to pieces. I’m going to tell you something about this little boy and girl, and perhaps some little reader will remember it. You see how very clean and neat both of them look. Well, if you had seen them when Grandma Devins first found them you never would have thought that they could be made to look as nice as this. Now hear their story:

Last Christmas Eve while Grandma Devins was sitting by her bright fire there was a loud knock at the door, and upon opening it, she found a policeman who had in his arms two children who were nearly dead.

“I come, mum,” he said, “to ask you, if you will let these poor little young ones stay here to-night in your kitchen; their mother has just died from the fever. She lived in an old hovel around in Acorn Alley, and I’m afraid to leave the young ones there to-night, for they’re half starved and half frozen to death now. God pity the poor, mum, God pity the poor, for it’s hard upon then, such weather as this.”

Meanwhile, Grandma Devins had pulled her big sofa up to the fire and was standing looking down upon the dirty and pinched little faces before her. She didn’t say anything, but she just kept looking at the children and wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. All at once she turned around as if she had been shot; she flew to the pantry and brought out some milk which she put on the fire to boil. And very soon she had two steaming cups of hot milk with nice biscuit broken into it, and with this she fed the poor little creatures until a little color came into their faces, and she knew that she had given them enough for that time.

The policeman said he would call for the children in the morning and take them to the almshouse. The fact is the policeman was a kindhearted man, and he secretly hoped that he could get someone to take the children and be kind to them.

As soon as Maggie and Johnny had their nice warm milk they began to talk. Johnny asked Grandma Devins if she had anybody to give her Christmas presents, and Grandma said, “no.” But Maggie spoke up and said her mamma told her before she died that God always gave Christmas presents to those who had no one to give them any. And throwing her arms around Grandma’s neck she said, “God will not forget you, dear lady, for you’ve been so good to us.” Like a flash of light it passed through Grandma Devins’ mind that God had sent her these children as her Christmas gift. So she said at once:

“Children, I made a mistake. I have had a Christmas present.”

“There,” said Maggie, “I knew you would get one; I knew it.” When the policeman came in the morning his heart was overjoyed to see the “young ones,” as he called them, nicely washed and sitting by the fire bundled up in some of Grandma Devins’ dresses. She had burnt every stitch of the dirty rags which they had on the night before. So that accounted for their being muffled up so.

“You can go right away, policeman; these children are my Christmas gift, and please God I’ll be mother and father both to the poor little orphans.”

A year has passed since then, and she says that Johnny and Maggie are the best Christmas gifts that any old woman ever had. She has taught Maggie to darn and sew neatly, and one of these days she will be able to earn money as a seamstress. Have you noticed her little needle-case hanging against the wall? Do you see the basket of apples on one side? Johnny was paring them when Maggie asked him to show her about her arithmetic, for Johnny goes to school, but Maggie stays at home and helps Grandma. Now as soon as Grandma comes back she is going to make them some mince pies for Christmas. Johnny will finish paring the apples, while Maggie is stoning the raisins. Oh! What a happy time they will have to-morrow. For I will whisper in your ear, little reader, that Grandma Devins is going to bring home something else with her other than raisins. The same kindhearted policeman who I told you about in the beginning, has made Johnny a beautiful sled, and painted the name “Hero” on it. Grandma has bought for Maggie the nicest little hood and cloak that ever you saw. Is that not nice? I guess if they knew what they’re going to get they wouldn’t sit so quietly as we see them; they’d jump up and dance about the floor, even if they tore the paper all to pieces. Oh! Let every little girl [and boy] thank our heavenly father for the blessed gift of His dear Son on the first Christmas Day, eighteen hundred and eighty years ago.