African American writer, lecturer, abolitionist, and women's rights activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was a notable voice in social reform in the nineteenth century. She captivated black and white audiences alike with dramatic recitations of her antislavery and social reform verse.

Dubbed the "Bronze Muse" in honor of her skills as both a writer and lecturer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is regarded as one of the most extraordinarily accomplished African American women of the nineteenth century. She was, for example, a respected poet whose ten volumes of verse sold well enough to provide her with a modest income. In 1859, she became the first black woman to publish a short story. And her only novel, Iola Leroy; or Shadows Uplifted (1892), was the first book by a black writer to depict the life of African Americans in the Reconstruction-era South. (Many colleges and universities across the United States still...