The African ancestry of their mother is concealed from the children, and they are not allowed to pass their vacations at home, spending that time instead together with the parents in a northern holiday resort. Although she is so white that 'no one would suspect that she has one drop of negro blood in her veins', the marriage results in the Leroy family becoming social outcasts. He sets her free, has her educated and marries her in a secret ceremony. When Eugene becomes seriously ill, she nurses him back to health. A small child when brutally separated from her mother Harriet Johnson, she finally becomes the slave of wealthy Eugene Leroy. After the war, he successfully runs a hardware store.

On account of his white skin, his superiors council him to change to a white regiment for better chances of promotion, but he refuses. He enlists in a colored regiment and is promoted to lieutenant. As a young man, he becomes the leader of a group of slaves who decide to seek refuge with the Union army during the Civil War. His enslaver, Nancy Johnson, sees him as a 'pet animal' and teaches him to read. He is still a child when separated from his mother Harriet. While a slave of Nancy Johnson, she resists a whipping. Harriet Johnson, Iola Leroy's grandmother. Iola Leroy, the principal character of the novel. While following what has been termed the 'sentimental' conventions of late nineteenth-century writing about women, it also deals with serious social issues of education for women, passing, miscegenation, abolition, reconstruction, temperance, and social responsibility.Ĭharacters Iola Leroy and family Harper, is one of the first novels published by an African-American woman. Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted, an 1892 novel by Frances E.

Frances harper iola leroy