In Milford, New Hampshire’s Bicentennial Park, a statue celebrates Harriet E. Wilson, the first Black American woman to publish a novel in the United States. In 1859, Wilson published Our Nig; or Sketches From the Life of A Free Black. The novel, which is a semi-autobiographical work, conveys the hardship and abuse Wilson endured in her life as a Black woman in 19th-century New England. After being abandoned by her parents, Wilson was forced to support herself from a young age, and found work as a servant for a well-known abolitionist family….
