Wright, Frances (1795–1852)

FRANCES “FANNY” WRIGHT, a woman ahead of her time, was a reformer, a radical free-thinker, a utopian, and devoted to the public good. She was born in Scotland to an upper-middle-class family. She and her younger sister, Camilla, were orphaned as children and sent to live with family in London, England. The death of an uncle left the young girls with a sizeable fortune. When Wright turned 18, she fled to the home of another uncle in Glasgow, Scotland. She was self-educated.

Wright first visited the United States from 1818 to 1820. Following this visit, she published Views of Society and Manners in America. She was a disciple of the English radical thinker Jeremy Bentham. During a trip to France, she met the Marquis de Lafayette, who became a close, life-long friend. She followed him to America in 1824 and became an American citizen in 1825.

Wright abhorred slavery. She sought to show the people of the United States how the country could extricate itself from its reliance on slaves. She planned to purchase slaves and then set them up in a remote area, on land she purchased on the Wolf River in southwestern Tennessee. She planned to educate the slaves morally and intellectually in preparation for a life of freedom. She believed the slaves would understand her good intentions and reward her by working extra hard on this farm, thus compensating her for the cost of their purchase. Any profit would be put toward expanding the project. The community she founded was called Nashoba.

Nashoba was little more than a shabby cabin, with no amenities and little food. Wright steadfastly believed others would copy her success and before long, slavery would come to an end. She compromised much of her fortune on this dream.

Unfortunately, Wright was not in good health. Malaria and other illnesses plagued her all her life. In [Page 496]1827 she decided to return to Europe to recuperate. The managers of Nashoba were nowhere near as tolerant as Fanny and abuse of the slaves became the norm. Wright eventually concluded that it would be best to only receive free blacks and educate them for possible colonization in Haiti. She believed they needed to be removed from the vicious white culture in America. However, attracting free blacks to Nashoba was not easy, nor was it simple, despite the hardships and prejudice they faced in America, to get free blacks to relocate outside America.

Frances Wright was a free-thinker and the first woman to publicly oppose slavery and women's inequality in the United States

Wright subsequently became the coeditor of the New Harmony Gazette (later renamed the Free Enquirer) and she lectured all over the United States on topics such as sexual equality, universal education, free love, the abolition of marriage, the liberalization of divorce laws, birth control, the abolition of capital punishment, atheism, and communalism. Settling in New York, she purchased a church building and turned it into a combination lecture hall, bookstore, museum, and headquarters for her causes. She became a central figure in the workingmen's movement, which included activism for factory workers. Her detractors called the workingmen's movement, the Fanny Wright Party.

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