Stay tuned for updates throughout the year.
Have a Frances E. W. Harper event to add to our Harper events page? Let us know at digblk@psu.edu.
Frances E. W. Harper
September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911
The year 2025 marks the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. The Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk is hosting #Harper200, a slate of exciting scholarly and arts programming and community events to commemorate Harper’s life and legacy. Events include:
- Transcribe Harper, featuring Harper’s papers on the Zooniverse platform, starting on her 200th birthday, Sept. 25th.
- A Frances Harper Mural in her adopted home of Philadelphia, in collaboration with Mural Arts Philadelphia on October 30, 2025.
- An exciting special issue of new poetry in conversation with Harper’s poetry, life, and legacy with poetry workshops in schools, community centers, and beyond.
- Read Harper!: A nationwide read-a-thon throughout 2025. Check it out!
- “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200” :A major digital exhibit for teaching and research with curricula geared toward both K-12 and college students.
- “Frances E. W. Harper 200: Looking Back, Moving Forward, 1825–2025“: An academic symposium to be held Sept. 19–21, 2025 at Penn State University.
- “The Artistry and Activism of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper“: An original performance of dance, poetry, and music with events held in the places she lived and worked. Debuting Sept. 19 at PSU’s Center for the Performing Arts.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was an author and activist whose groundbreaking legacy has been foundational for Black women writers and organizers alike. Born free in Baltimore, orphaned at an early age, and adopted into her activist uncle’s household, she grew up to become the most popular Black poet and prolific Black novelist of the nineteenth century. As a young woman and as a seasoned activist, Harper broke through barriers in too many arenas to count: as a woman anti-slavery speaker, as a Black woman in higher education, as a writer, as a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and as an organizational leader in the movements for Black and women’s political rights and dignity. To learn more on Frances Harper, please see our digital exhibit “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200.”
Now Available
Transcribe-a-thon
Transcribe Harper! is a community transcription project in celebration of Frances E. W. Harper’s 200th birthday.
Symposium
Frances E. W. Harper 200: Looking Back, Moving Forward, 1825–2025
A three-day, in-person symposium featuring a dance performance, five panels, five presentations of Harper commemoration events, and a reception to honor Dr. Frances Smith Foster.
Videos coming soon!
Read-a-thon
Individuals or any group of readers—students, reading groups or book clubs, friends and family—are invited to use our resource to create their own reading adventure. We offer a suggested reading calendar of digitized texts accompanied by a video series with Harper experts including Frances Smith Foster, Brigette Fielder, Koritha Mitchell, Sherita Johnson, and Derrick Spires.
Digital Exhibit
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200
This exhibit examines the work of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was an author and activist whose groundbreaking legacy has been foundational for Black women writers and organizers alike.
Related Scholarly and Community Commemorations