Frankie E. Harris Wassom

Frankie E. Harris taught school in Virginia after college. She became a school principal in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1871. In 1874 she accepted a position as teacher in Mississippi, but only stayed a year. After she married, Frankie E. Harris Wassom taught and wrote poetry for newspapers in Goldsboro, North Carolina. She taught aspiring teachers at the Goldsboro Normal School^[3] and was an officer of the Colored Teachers Council of Wayne County.^[4] By 1893 she was teaching in Knoxville again.^[1] In 1907, she was teaching at the Lincoln Institute in Kansas.^[5] In 1916, she was a school principal in Odessa, Missouri.^[6] In all, she taught for 54 years, including two faculty positions at black colleges.^[7]

In 1886 her first book of poems was published. She showed some of her art at the North Carolina State Colored Industrial Fair that same year, and a song she wrote, "Coming to the Fair", was performed at the fair's educational convention.^[1][8]

Frankie E. Harris married Col. George T. Wassom, a lawyer and politician, in 1874.^[1] They had two daughters, Pearl and Mabel. F. E. H. Wassom died in North Carolina in 1933, aged 83 years.^[9]

Her sister's Elizabeth's husband was James E. O'Hara, a lawyer and congressman from North Carolina.^[10]