Julia C. Collins (? - 1865)
Williamsport, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Essayist, teacher, and author, her work, The Curse of Caste, is considered to be among the first published novels by an African American woman. In 1865, it was serialized in the African Methodist Episcopal Christian Recorder, a publication with nationwide circulation. Her life and writings provide a glimpse into the rarely documented experiences of nineteenth-century African American women, their families, and their communities.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Julia C. Collins was a Black essayist and teacher in Civil War–era Williamsport whose serialized novel, The Curse of Caste, is regarded as among the first published novels by an African American woman. Appearing in 1865 in the AME Church's Christian Recorder, a paper read across the nation, her fiction and essays reached a wide Black readership at the very moment of emancipation. She died that same year, her story left tantalizingly unfinished.
Why it matters
Her writings open a rare window onto the inner lives of nineteenth-century African American women — voices seldom recorded — and mark a pioneering moment in Black American literature.
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