06/17/2026
JUNETEENTH & WOMEN'S HISTORY: FRANCES E.W. HARPER
Poet, abolitionist and suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore in 1825. She was the first African-American woman to publish a short story, and her abolitionist and suffragist work led her to becoming a household name in the 19th century.
Frances was an only child, born to free African American parents, but was raised by her aunt and uncle after her parents' tragic deaths. Her uncle, William Watkins, was an outspoken abolitionist who practiced self-taught medicine, organized a black literacy society and established his own school in 1920. Frances was highly influenced by her uncle's activism and attended the school he founded until she was 13, where she worked at a small family-owned bookstore. She realized her love of books while working there, and at age 21, she published her first small volume of poetry, "Forest Leaves".
At 26, Frances left Maryland for Ohio and became the first female instructor at Union Seminary, a school for free African-Americans. Shortly after she began teaching, her home state of Marylan passed a law stating that African-Americans living in the North were no longer allowed to enter and if found, they would be jailed and sold into slavery. She devoted her efforts to the anti-slavery cause, moving in with abolitionist friends of her uncle. For the next eight years, she traveled across the United States and Canada as a traveling lecturer by Maine and Pennsylvania's Anti-Slavery societies after her first speech, "The Elevation and Education of our People".
Frances stayed committed to the pursuit of equal rights, job opportunities, and education for African American women until her passing in February 1911.
YWCA NENY celebrates Frances E.W. Harper for all of her contributions to the anti-slavery movement and for all of her work towards equal rights for African Americans and women everywhere.
Source: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/frances-ellen-watkins-harper
