​Black History Month Profile: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

​February is Black History Month, so each week we are going to be featuring an influential African American who has transformed our country or world for the better.  When I was looking at this, I wanted to focus on men & women who either spoke to me personally as an ally, who are not as well known as they should be, or who had some connection to what we do.  Well we found a great one to start with.  

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is not a name many know, unless they have taken courses in African American studies or have researched heavily.  She was born in Baltimore, MD. At 13, Frances had to abandon her formal education and was employed as a seamstress and nursemaid for a white family that owned a bookshop.  While She stopped attending school, she read prolifically and became a writer herself.   

 By the age of 20 had her first book of published poetry.  At the age of 67 she published a critical acclaimed novel, “Iola Leroy’, which one of many she wrote. She was a prolific writer for publications working to abolish slavery.  And became a well respected public speaker in that fight.  Part of her inspiration came from her uncle, a African Methodist Episcopal pastor.  

By age 25 she was an instructor at Union Seminary in Columbus, connected to the African Methodist Episcopal church (and I could write another long post on why there was a Methodist Episcopal (the current name is United Methodist Church) Denomination and An African Methodist Episcopal Denomination, short answer is what you think it was, men & women of color were treated as lesser than in the denomination and split off ).  


In 1858, Harper refused to give up her seat or ride in the "colored" section of a segregated trolley car in Philadelphia[17] (97 years before Rosa Parks). In the same year, she published her poem "Bury Me in a Free Land" in The Anti-Slavery Bugle, which became one of her best known works. She became of friend to or mentor of many other African American writers and journalists, including Mary Shadd Cary, Ida B. Wells, Victoria Earle Matthews, and Kate D. Chapman.


As she continued to write and speak out, she experienced and began to write and speak out against the gender stereotyping she faces as well.  

Even before the Civil War she had begun speaking out for the need for women’s suffrage, at time few were.  She combined her fight for African American civil rights with her advocacy for women's rights. Sadly the movement was about white women getting the right to vote, but she fought hard to gain the inclusion of women of color.  The effort did eventually prevail, and many credit a speech she gave to a national convention of women’s rights in 1866.  That organization found the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), which incorporated African American suffrage into the Women's Suffrage Movement. But it is noted that Mrs. Harper does not appear in the History of Woman Suffrage anthology written by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  

As a poet, author, and lecturer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a household name in the nineteenth century. Not only was she the first African American woman to publish a short story, but she was also an influential abolitionist, suffragist.  She spent the rest of her career working for the pursuit of equal rights, job opportunities, and education for African American women. 

Mrs. Harper died at the Age of 85.  Despite being a prolific writer of poetry, short stories, essays, and multiple novels, most of us have not heard of her.  I hadn’t until I was researching people to profile in our Black History Month posts.  

So, this Black History Month, learn more about some of the more well known figures of African American history, but also look for women & men like her.  I guarantee you there are events and people of color you didn’t learn about in even the best history class.