Biography
Frank Garvin Yerby was born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 5, 1916. His father, Rufus Garvin Yerby, worked as a hotel doorman and had black, white, and Native American heritage. His mother, Wilhelmina Ethel Smythe, was a teacher with white and more distant black ancestry. Yerby attended the Haines Institute, a private school for black students in Augusta, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Paine College. He completed a Master of Arts in English at Fisk University in 1938. Nearly seven years later, his short story "Health Card," which won the O. Henry Memorial Award for best first published short story in 1944, launched his writing career.
In 1946, his debut novel, "The Foxes of Harrow," was an immediate hit. Yerby became the first African American novelist to appear on the United States Best Seller Lists. The following year, after 20th Century Fox acquired the film rights to the novel, he became the first African American novelist to have a movie adapted by a major Hollywood studio.
Yerby’s novels are typically action-filled period pieces, often featuring a strong white protagonist grappling with the challenges of his era. His stories are known for vivid language and diverse characters, with a focus on black or "Negro" figures. After his first novel, an action-adventure with a prominent black lead, was rejected by every publisher, he shifted from protest literature to historical fiction centered on white protagonists.
Rising to prominence as a writer of popular fiction imbued with a distinctive "Old South" atmosphere, Yerby authored thirty-three novels and sold over seventy million copies worldwide in both hardcover and paperback editions.
Despite his success, Yerby faced criticism as a Black author for not focusing more on the struggles of African Americans. He maintained that writers should entertain rather than preach, though his novels often revealed the brutal double standards of the "Old South," including harsh depictions of Klansmen, white slave owners, and others. The extent of racial discrimination in the United States led Yerby to leave his homeland and live in self-imposed exile: in Nice, France from 1952 to 1955, and then in Madrid, Spain from 1955 until his death on November 29, 1991.
