Celebrating the local legacy of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s 200th birthday, she is memorialized as a literary scholar, suffragist, and club woman, and valued community member. This virtual lecture examines the areas of Harper’s life and legacy as evidence of how free African Americans experienced life in a slave-operating state, how the women’s club movement built inclusive spaces for African American agency, and how the Sharp Leadenhall neighborhood nurtured the African American community. This panel includes Ida Jones, PhD, Associate Director of Special Collections & University Archivist at Morgan State University; Lawrence Jackson, PhD, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University; and Betty Bland Thomas, President of the Historic Sharp-Leadenhall Community.