Iola Leroy or, Shadows Uplifted — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / Frances E.W. Harper

Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted, is the story of Iola Leroy, beautiful young daughter of a wealthy white Mississippi planter and his mixed-race wife, a former slave he has freed and married. Iola is sent north to be educated and, after the death of her father, kidnapped, told that she has Negro blood, and is sold into slavery down south. In a plot that follows the conventions of the Tragic mulatto genre, Iola struggles to elude the depraved intentions of her various owners and, after she is freed by the Union Army, she seeks to find her scattered family members, to embrace her heritage, and to devote herself to improving the social and economic condition of blacks in America. Iola is supported in her struggle by her brother, Harry, who also refuses to pass as white, a devoted former slave, Tom Anderson, who rescues her from a lecherous master, and a newfound uncle, Robert Johnson, who introduces her to her dark-skinned grandmother Harriet.After the war Leroy continues to embrace her heritage. She declines to pass for white when New England suitor Dr. Gresham makes it a condition of his proposal of marriage. He wants her to promise never to reveal her race.