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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, circa 1860.
Credit: Hallie Q. Brown (Hallie Quinn), 1859-1949, compiled and edited by Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction.
The most prominent African-American woman writer of her generation, Frances Harper made Philadelphia her home from the early 1850s until her death in 1911. In a career that spanned more than forty years she wrote poetry and novels, and played a significant role in the American abolition, temperance, women’s rights, and black civil rights' movements.