[3] Mary Elizabeth Ashe was born in Mobile, Alabama on 12 January 1851, the daughter of Simon S. and Adelia M.

[4] On 30 December 1872, Mary married Benjamin F. Lee, Professor of Pastoral Theology at Wilberforce, and later its president.

[3] Mary E. Ashe Lee contributed several articles to the Christian Recorder and to the A.M.E. Quarterly Review.

[6] In 1998, an extract was part of Nineteenth-century American Women Poets: An Anthology, which called it "remarkable and powerful".

[6][7] Co-editor and academic Hollis Robbins said of "Afmerica":It's a remarkable poem, insisting upon the central role of black women in the making of America, as if she's talking to Tocqueville directly.Paula Bennett has written that the publication of "Afmerica" in Southern Workman represented "a rare departure from its usually conservative approach to racial and social questions", as the poem "confronts one of the nineteenth century’s most controversial social issues, “amalgamation,” or the sexual mixing of whites with peoples of color.