Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins (1825–1911)

US social reformer, lecturer, and poet. The best-known African-American poet of the era, she also published articles against slavery and a short story, ‘The Two Offers’ (1859), probably the first such published work by any African-American. She lectured on a variety of social causes, stressing the need for temperance, education, and morality among her fellow African-Americans. She was active in various organizations, including the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Women (1896), and in her later years, she also took up the cause of women's rights.

Harper was born free in a slave city in Baltimore, Maryland, and was raised by an abolitionist uncle. In 1845 she published her first volume of poetry. She taught sewing in the early 1850s, and in 1854 she gave her first antislavery lecture; she would continue to give such lectures throughout the Northeast. She also gave recitations of her poems, and published her second volume, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854). Her extensive writings, including several volumes of poetry, a travel book, and a novel, no longer have much literary status but they were important in providing a new image of and for African-Americans.