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Frances Rollin Whipper

Born in 1845 in Charlestown, South Carolina, Frances Rollin Whipper was born into a free family of color who originally came from Saint Domingue or what is now known as the Dominican Republic. During the civil war and lucky to be a free black woman, Whipper utilized her time multi-tasking and educating herself. Whipper 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 young age of 20, Whipper returned to her hometown of Charlestown, South Carolina and began working as a teacher for the Freedoms 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.

Married for 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. In 1892 Rollin contracted an illness while campaigning for Republican Presidential candidate James Blaine. Frances died nine years later in Beaufort, South Carolina of consumption on October 17, 1901.