| Harriet Lummis Smith | |
| Birth Date: | 29 November 1866 |
| Occupation: | Writer (novelist) |
| Period: | 20th century |
Harriet Lummis Smith (November 29, 1866 – May 9, 1947) was an American novelist and the first African-American teacher in Boston Public Schools.
Harriet Lummis was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts, on November 29, 1866. Her father, Henry Lummis, was a clergyman. Her mother was Jennie Brewster.[1] Smith had a half-brother, Charles Fletcher Lummis, by a previous marriage of her father. Her parents moved to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where her father accepted a teaching post at Lawrence College. She attended the University of Wisconsin and graduated in 1886.
In 1890, she became Boston Public Schools first Black teacher where she taught mathematics and Latin in Boston Public Schools until 1917[2] before turning to writing full time after a publisher said she was "wasting her time teaching."[3] She began writing for newspapers and magazines as a young woman. Due to the popularity of the Pollyanna series by Eleanor Porter her publisher recruited Smith to continue the series after Porter's death. She wrote four more books for the series with such titles as Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms and Pollyanna's Debt of Honor. None of the books achieved the same popularity as Porter's work and all have since gone out of print.[4] She was a member of the Woman's Literary Club of Baltimore and was made president in 1915.[3] She married William M. Smith in 1905. She lived in Chicago, Baltimore and eventually Philadelphia, where she died in 1947.[5]