People, Locations, Episodes

Ann Plato, Author, and Educator born

Book about Ann Plator by Rod Wellburn

*The birth of Ann Plato around 1820 is celebrated on this date. She was a nineteenth-century Black educator and author.

Plato was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Like many Blacks who lived in America during this time, very little information is recorded about her. Most of what is known about Plato comes from the introduction in her book written by Reverend W.C. Pennington, pastor of the Colored Congregational Church of Hartford, who also called her "Platoess."

She was one of the first black women to publish a book in America and the first to publish a book of essays. Plato was thought to have had a Native American father. She worked as a school teacher at the Black Zion Methodist Church School of Hartford and was also a member of the Talcott Street Congregational Church in Hartford. In 1841, Plato published her only known book, Essays: Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Poetry.

The writings reflected the New England Puritan values of her environment. Topics for the essays included "Benevolence," "Education," "Employment," and "Religion." Her works also stressed the importance of education and leading a pious, industrious life. The book also contained some poetry and biographies of female friends and acquaintances.

Some critics find Plato's essays and poetry overly moralizing and unoriginal, and she’s been criticized for not mentioning the issue of American slavery.  Her one reference to slavery concerns the abolition of slavery in the West Indies in 1838.  In 1988, Oxford University Press released The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers with Professor Henry Louis Gates as the series' general editor. Plato's book was reprinted as a part of this collection.

In 1988, Trinity College established the Ann Plato Fellowship in her honor. Anne Plato’s death is unknown.

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