This 1868 personal diary of Frances Anne Rollin is one of the earliest known diaries written by a southern black woman. Rollin was a nineteenth century suffragette, author, and teacher. Her diary covers the publication of her biography of Martin R. Delany, her courtship and first year of marriage to William J. Whipper, and life during Reconstruction in Columbia, South Carolina.
Help us transcribe this diary and learn more about the life of this Reconstruction-era activist, teacher, and author.
Frances Anne Rollin and her four sisters, Charlotte (Chair of the South Carolina Woman Suffrage Association), Katherine, Louise, and Florence, were 19th century suffragettes who actively advocated for equal rights for women. During Reconstruction, they operated a successful political salon in Columbia, South Carolina, where blacks, whites, women, and men discussed civil, social, and political rights for all Americans.
Frances Rollin was also a writer and the author of Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany which upon appearing in 1868 became the first full-length biography written by an African American. Rollin also kept a diary in 1868, making it one of the earliest known diaries by a southern black woman.
Major Martin Delany, the highest-ranking African American in the military at the end of the Civil War, was so impressed by the young teacher that he commissioned her to write his biography. Rollin traveled to Boston to write and to seek a publisher. Her diary describes her writing experience as well as her meetings with notable abolitionists and luminaries of the Civil War Era and notes Delany’s financial challenges once the Civil War ended.
Returning to South Carolina in 1868, Frances Rollin was employed by a Pennsylvania-born black attorney, William J. Whipper, who had been recently elected to the South Carolina Legislature. Rollin and Whipper married a few months later. Rollin continued her diary during their brief courtship and first year of marriage.
