Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: The Mother of African American journalism

By Meserette Kentake | Kentake Page

Frances E.W. Harper was a leading African-American poet and writer. She was also an ardent activist in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. Harper had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at age 20 and her widely praised novel Iola Leroy, at age 67.

Frances Ellen Watkins was born on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore, Maryland, only child of free parents. She was orphaned when she was three and was raised by an aunt and uncle. Her uncle, Rev. William Watkins, was a civil rights activist, and Harper was educated at his Academy for African-American children. He was a major influence on her life and work.

Bright and talented, Harper started writing poetry in her youth. She kept on writing while working for a Quaker family after finishing school. Self-supporting by age thirteen and largely self-educated, she published in 1845, a book of poetry and prose, titled Forest Leaves (alternatively called Autumn Leaves), of which no copies survive.

In 1850, she moved from Maryland, a Maafa (slavery) state, to Ohio, a free state. In Ohio she taught domestic science as the first woman faculty member at Union Seminary, an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) school which later was merged into Wilberforce University. The school was run by leading abolitionist John Brown. A new law in 1853 prohibited any free Black persons from re-entering Maryland, so in 1854, Harper moved to Pennsylvania for a teaching job in Little York. The next year she moved to Philadelphia. During these years, she embarked on a career as a traveling speaker on the abolitionist circuit. She helped enslaved African-Americans escape through the Underground Railroad and wrote frequently for anti-slavery newspapers, earning her a reputation as the mother of African American journalism.

A prolific writer, Harper published many collections of poetry, including Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), which was reprinted 20 times and sold 10,000 copies in its first five years. She became the most popular woman poet of her day, and an in-demand lecturer on behalf of the abolitionist movement, appearing with the likes of Frederick Douglass, William Garrison, Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone.

In 1858, she refused to give up her seat or ride in the “colored” section of a segregated trolley car in Philadelphia (100 years before Rosa Parks). She made literary history in 1859 with the publication of Two Offers. With this work, she became the first African-American female writer to publish a short story. The following year, on November 22, 1860, she married Fenton Harper, a widower with three children. Harper retreated from public life, choosing to live with her husband and children in Ohio. In 1862, she gave birth to a daughter, Mary Frances, who became a teacher.

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