ABSTRACT
Fanny Jackson Coppin voiced the belief that race was more of an impediment than gender when she wrote: "I never rose to recite in my classes at Oberlin but I felt that I had the honor of the whole African race upon my shoulders. I felt that, should I fail, it would be ascribed to the fact that I was colored."' Coppin expressed these feelings as an African American, not as a woman because the burden of racism was experienced by all African Americans, regardless of gender.
