Frances harper biography

African-American author and activist

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, – February 22, ) was an American abolitionist, suffragist, poet, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer.

Beginning in , she was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.

Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, Harper had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at the age of At 67, she published her widely praised novel Iola Leroy (), placing her among the first Black women to publish a novel.^[1]

As a young woman in , Harper taught domestic science at Union Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, a school affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).^[2] In , while living with the family of William Still, a clerk at the Pennsylvania Abolition Society who helped refugee slaves make their way along the Underground Railroad, Harper started to write anti-slavery literature.^&