Ballot & Beyond: Francis Watkins Harper | Fighting for the Rights of All

Francis Ellen Watkins Harper is a legendary civil rights activist who saw the intersection of the fight for abolition and suffrage. Harper was a published poet and author who had been born free in Baltimore in 1825 and campaigned around the country for temperance, abolition, and women’s rights. In an attempt to create social unity after the American Civil War, American Equal Rights Association members like Harper believed it was the right time to integrate gender, race, and class-based advocacy in a broad push for equality. Harpers integrated goals and ideal was largely unheaded and the suffrage movement was highly segregated.