Ann Plato

Ann Plato (c. 1823 – unknown) was a 19th century African American educator and author. She was the second African American woman to publish a book in the United States and the first to publish a book of essays There is little biographical information on Plato, and most of her life is known from her only published work, Essays; including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, which included the preface written by Reverend James W. C. Pennington, an abolitionist leader in Hartford, Connecticut, and a pastor.

Ann Plato was born around 1820 or 1824 in Hartford, Connecticut, and was most likely the eldest daughter of Henry and Deborah Plato. Her father was a farmer, and she had one sister, as well as a brother who died young. until 1847. Some critics from later generations found Plato's essays and poetry to be overly moralizing as well as routine and lacking in originality. Many of them also derided her for not mentioning the issue of slavery in America, as did some of her near contemporaries including Frances Harper and Charlotte Forten Grimke. Plato's one reference to slavery in her book concerns its abolition in the West Indies in 1838 (perhaps a reference to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 valid throughout the British Empire). She does, however, emphasize the equality of people, regardless of race, a few times in the Essays. However, Ron Welburn in his book Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity (SUNY Press, 2015) records that in the 1870 Iowa Federal census a 46 year old woman called "Miss Plato" who may well be Ann Plato is listed as residing in Decorah Township, Winneshiek County, Iowa.

In 1988, Oxford University Press released The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers with Professor Henry Louis Gates as the general editor of the series. Plato's book was reprinted as a part of this collection. Trinity College, Connecticut, established the Ann Plato Fellowship in her honor in 1988.

Essays: Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces of Prose and Poetry (1841), contains four biographical compositions, 16 very short essays, and 20 poems and is sectioned off into three parts: "Prose," "Biographies," and "Poetry." This collection reflects Plato's work and interest in the antebellum schoolroom as well as her relationship to religion. The prose section reflects Plato’s ideas about education and how Christian principals are infused in the classroom. Plato uses the eulogies of four Black girls, Louisa Sebury, Julia Ann Pell, Eliza Loomis Sherman, and Elizabeth Low, who most likely died of consumption, to present a template on how to live a "legible" righteous life. Finally, her poetry section is a collection of poetry that further considers life, death, and suffering.