Mary Frances Gunner (November 9, 1894 – May 13, 1953) was an African American playwright and community leader based in Brooklyn, New York.

[1] Mary Frances Gunner was born in Lexington, Kentucky and raised in Hillburn, New York, the daughter of Rev.

[6] She also attended Howard University, and was an officer in that school's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 1923, she completed a master's degree in the Political Science department at Columbia University, with a thesis titled "Employment Problems Among Negro Women in Brooklyn.

[15] Her pageant play, Light of the Women (1924), presents the stories of such African-American heroines as Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Fanny Jackson Coppin, and Phillis Wheatley.