In 1820 Frances Harper was born an only child to free African American parents in the state of Maryland. At only the age of three Frances moved in with her aunt and uncle, Henrietta and William Watkins, after her parents died. William was merely the age of 19, he was born in 1800, and just like Frances he was born free in the state of Maryland.
The population of free African Americans was beginning to increase, from when Maryland first entered the Union in 1788. At that time there were twice as many slaves than free African Americans in the Baltimore, Maryland area. William who was an outspoken abolitionist, practiced self-taught medicine, organized a black literary society and established his own school in 1820 called the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth. His love of education ensured that Frances was provided a good education. She attended the Academy for Negro Youth, and the rigorous education she received, along with the political activism of her uncle, affected and influenced her poetry.
Harper left school in 1839, and shortly after her first poems were published in abolitionist periodicals, such as Frederick Douglass’ Paper. In 1845, Harper’s first book of poems, “Forest Leaves,” was published. As she grew older, her love of reading and writing blossomed. Leading her to leave Maryland to become the first woman instructor at Union Seminary, a school for free African Americans in Wilberforce, Ohio. She left Ohio just a year later for a teaching position in Pennsylvania. While in Pennsylvania, her home state Maryland passed a law stating that free African Americans living in the North were no longer allowed to enter the state of Maryland. If found, they would be imprisoned and sold into slavery. With the realization that she may never be able to return home, a new purpose sparked inside her, and she decided to put all of her effort into the antislavery cause.
Frances moved in with William Still and his wife Letitia George who were friends of her uncle. Still was known as the father of the Underground Railroad. With the support of the people around her, Harper began writing poetry for antislavery newspapers. She also began giving anti-slavery speeches throughout the northern United States and Canada as a representative of the Maine Anti-Slavery Society. Her speeches included her prose and poetry, in which she combined the issues of racism, feminism and classism. Frances’s second book “Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects,” was published in 1854.
She sold thousands of copies of her book while traveling and lecturing. She donated a large portion of the proceeds to the Underground Railroad. Frances stopped traveling and giving speeches after she had her daughter, but began again after her husband passed away. In 1866, Harper gave a moving speech before the National Woman’s Rights Convention demanding equal rights for all, including black women. Harper’s efforts to raise consciousness on this issue earned her election as vice president of the National Association of Colored Women in 1897.
Frances spent the rest of her career working for the pursuit of equal rights, job opportunities, and education for African American women. She also published books throughout this period, including “Sketches of Southern Life” (1872), “The Martyr of Alabama and Other Poems” (1894), and her well-known novel “Iola Leroy”, or “Shadows Uplifted” (1892). “Iola Leroy” is one of the first novels published by a black woman in the United States. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper died on February 22, 1911 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of heart disease.
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