Mrs. Harper was born in Maryland in 1825, and grew up there, leaving school at the age of fourteen. As a lecturer, she has few equals, and possibly none among her own race. Mr. Still has given a record of her energetic labors in his Under-ground Railroad, as has also William Wells Brown, in his Rising Sun. She has even been a promoter of Afro-American journalism, and a regular contributor thereto. The New York Independent, The Christian Recorder, The A. M. E. Review, and The Anglo-African, have been made the more attractive by her productions. Her poems and prose writings have been found in other papers; but those mentioned are the most prominent. Her poetical and prose writings are excellent, and have been extensively read by white people, as well as by the blacks. The Afro-American press would suffer a great loss by the withdrawal of her intellectual and cheering aid. She has been the journalistic mother, so to speak, of many brilliant young women who have entered upon her line of work so recently.
Mrs. A. E. Johnson.
The subject of this sketch was born in 1858. Her parents were both natives of Maryland. She was educated in Montreal, Canada, and came to Baltimore, Md., in 1874, where she has made her home ever since. She was married to Rev. Harvey Johnson, D. D., in 1877.
Mrs. Johnson began literary work by writing short poems, etc., for various race periodicals. In 1887 she was strongly impressed with the idea that there ought to be a journal in which the writers among our people, especially females, could publish stories, poetry, and matter of a purely literary character, for the perusal of young people; so, in the year above mentioned, she launched upon the uncertain waves of journalism The Joy, an eight-page, monthly paper, containing
