Frances Rollin Whipper

Frances Rollin Whipper was born in 1845 in Charleston, South Carolina, into a free family of color . During the civil war and lucky to be a free black woman, Whipper utilized her time multi-tasking and educating herself. She attended The Quaker School for Colored Youth in Philadelphia where she also began her career as a writer/author and an activist for civil rights and feminism.

In 1865 and at the age of 20, Whipper returned to her hometown of Charleston and began working as a teacher for the Freedmen's Bureau, which was a U.S Federal government agency that aided distressed freed slaves during the Reconstruction Era of the United States. Three years later she was employed and began working for a Pennsylvania-born attorney, William J. Whipper, who had recently been elected to the South Carolina legislature. Despite family opposition, Rollin and Whipper married after a few months of meeting.

While married, Frances Rollin, now Frances Whipper, began writing diaries which focused on the social life of Columbia, South Carolina and recorded the anti-black, anti-republican violence that was then on-going in the state.

After 12 years, the Whippers' marriage began to decline due to marital and political issues. The dream of an equal opportunity south became irrelevant and the Ku Klux Klan was now on the move and rapidly spreading. Frances decided to separate from her husband and took their three children with her.

Frances A. Rollin, the political activist, teacher, and author, along with her four sisters, was very instrumental in politics during the Reconstruction Era.[2] Frances was born in 1844, in Charleston, South Carolina, to free color people.[3] This consisted of a small group of families that were related by blood or marriage, and were notably wealthy and owned value property, including slaves.[2] They were fair-skinned, well-educated, and conducted themselves in a well mannered and respectable way. They also controlled what literary material was read, and established their own organization.[2] One of the organization that were established was the Brown Fellowship society. This society was developed in 1790 and was only open to free light skin men.[2] Frances' father, William, was a member. There is little known about her mother. William Rollin was an offspring from the Haitian French, and came from one of the most honorable families in Santo Domingo.[2] In addition he was a wealthy wood and lumber dealer, and owned value property, such as slaves. He stood firm on his principle that all his daughters receive a first rate education.[2] Frances, the eldest, was sent to Philadelphia to take the " ladies course" at the Quaker Institute for Colored Youth, where she began her career as a writer and an advocate for feminism, and civil rights.[2] After returning to Charleston, South Carolina, Frances taught at schools supported by the American Missionary Association.[3] Also Frances and her sister advocated for women rights and suffrage, by recruiting well-to-do black and white Republicans' wives to join them in the fight. Katherine and Charlotte arranged a women's rights convention that was held in 1870 in Columbia, South Carolina, as well as established the South Carolina Branch of the American Woman Suffrage Association.[3]

Frances Ann Rollin began her career as a teacher for Freedmen's Bureau. In 1865, she was illegally refused first class passage on a ferry to Beaufort. She filed a lawsuit against the captain of the ferry and won. Rollin was aided in her case by Major Martin Delany. Delany eventually asked Rollin to write his biography. In 1868, she published the Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany[4] with the help of Lee and Shepard, a Boston publishing company. She wrote the book under her pen name Frank A. Rollin. This became the first full-length biography written by an African American. Frances Ann Rollin began writing a diary that detailed her "writing experiences as well as her meetings with notable abolitionist and luminaries of the Civil War era and notes Delany's financial challenges once the Civil War ended. Her diary became the earliest known diary by a southern black woman. Her diary "allowed a rare glimpse into the social life of Columbia, the South Carolina capital, and recorded the anti-black, anti-Republican violence then ongoing in the state during Reconstruction." She married William J. Whipper, a black attorney who had been recently elected to the South Carolina Legislature despite her family’s disapproval.

During the 1880s, Rollin separated from her husband and took her children with her to Washington, DC. In Washington, she attended Howard University School of Medicine, where she "became one of the first black women physicians in the United States."[5] She helped put her children through college and lived to see them accomplish their career goals. In 1892 "she contracted an illness while campaigning for Republican Presidential Candidate James G. Blaine",[6] and died in Beaufort, South Carolina, on October 17, 1901.

• “Frances Ann Rollin Whipper,” Notable Black American Women (1992), Gale Biography in Content, Web September 13, 2012.
• Ione, Carole. Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color. New York: Summit Books. 1991
• Gatewood, Willard B. “The Remarkable Misses Rollin.” Black Women in Reconstruction South Carolina. South Carolina Historical Magazine 92 (July 1991):172-188.
• Rollin, Frank A., The Life and Services of Martin R. Delany. Boston: Lea & Sheppard, 1883. http://digilib.nypl.org/dynaweb/digs/wwm9720/ (accessed 10/04/2012)
• Shockley, Ann Allen (ed.), Afro-American Women Writers: 1746-1933 (1988).
• Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. “Rollin Sisters". Black women in America. Second Edition, edited by Darlene Clark Hine. Oxford African American Studies Center.
• Whitehead, K. Wise. "Rollin, Frances". In Henry Louis Gates Jr., Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (eds). African American National Biography, Oxford African American Studies Center.

• Works by Frances Rollin Whipper at Project Gutenberg