Ottie Beatrice Graham

Ottie Beatrice Graham
From the 1922 yearbook of Howard University
Born	December 11, 1901 Virginia, U.S.
Died	March 31, 1944(1944-03-31) (aged 42) Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Other names	Ottie B. Jefferson (after 1925)
Alma mater	Howard University
Occupation	Writer
Spouse	William Guss Jefferson ​ ​ (m. 1925)​ (died 1941)
Children	1

Ottie Beatrice Graham Jefferson (December 11, 1901 – March 31, 1944)[1] was an American writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance cultural movement.[2]

Early life and education

Graham was born in Virginia, United States, and raised in Philadelphia, the daughter of Rev. Wesley Faul Graham and Josephine A. Shields Graham. Her father was a Baptist clergyman and insurance executive.[3] She graduated from William Penn High School for Girls in Philadelphia in 1918. She studied drama with Thomas Montgomery Gregory, was active in the first productions of the Howard Players, and graduated from Howard University in 1922.[2][4] She was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.[5]

Career

Graham's "To A Wild Rose" was awarded first prize in a student fiction contest, by the judges Arthur B. Spingarn, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and W. E. B. Du Bois.[6][7] She starred in a production of her own one-act play The King's Carpenters (1921) at the Harlem YWCA in 1922.[8] Later in her life, she taught school in Pennsylvania.[5]

Publications

• The King's Carpenters (1921, one-act play)[8]
• Holiday (1923, one-act play)[9]
• "To A Wild Rose" (1923, short story)[6][10][11]
• "Blue Aloes" (1924, short story)[10][11]
• "Slackened Caprice" (1924, short story)[12]

Personal life

Graham married physician and musician William Guss Jefferson in 1925.[13] They lived in Steelton, Pennsylvania, and had a son, Michael Graham Jefferson, born in 1927. Her husband died by suicide in December 1941,[14] and she died in March 1944, at the age of 42, at a hospital in Harrisburg.[5] Her stories have been included in several anthologies of African-American women's writing.[7][9][10][11][12]

References

1. Birth and death date as given on her Pennsylvania death certificate, via Ancestry; some sources give her birth year as 1900.
2. Bracks, Lean'tin L.; Smith, Jessie Carney (2014-10-16). Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 91–92. ISBN 978-0-8108-8543-1.
3. "The American Beneficial Insurance Company in Front". Richmond Planet. 1903-01-31. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-02-10 – via Newspapers.com.
4. Howard University, The Minerva (1922 yearbook).
5. "Mrs. Ottie B. Jefferson". The Evening News. 1944-04-03. p. 8. Retrieved 2023-02-10 – via Newspapers.com.
6. Graham, Ottie B. (June 1923). "To A Wild Rose: A Prize Story". The Crisis. 26 (2): 59–63.
7. Roses, Lorraine Elena; Randolph, Ruth Elizabeth (1996). Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950. Harvard University Press. p. 510. ISBN 978-0-674-37269-6.
8. "'The King's Carpenters' Presented at the Y.M.C.A." The New York Age. 1922-12-30. p. 6. Retrieved 2023-02-10 – via Newspapers.com.
9. introduction by Jennifer Burton (1996). Zora Neale Hurston, Eulalie Spence, Marita Bonner, and others : the prize plays and other one-acts published in periodicals. New York. ISBN 0-7838-1436-4. OCLC 34284693.
10. The Sleeper wakes : Harlem renaissance stories by women. Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Gwendolyn Bennett, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Dorothy West, Marita Bonner, Angelina Emily Grimké, Maude Irwin Owens, Leila Amos Pendleton, Anita Scott Coleman, Ottie B. Graham, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, Eloise A. Bibb, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1993. ISBN 0-8135-1944-6. OCLC 26590358.
11. Musser, Judith (2010-11-29). "Girl, Colored" and Other Stories: A Complete Short Fiction Anthology of African American Women Writers in The Crisis Magazine, 1910-2010. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7864-4606-3.
12. Ebony rising : short fiction of the greater Harlem Renaissance era. Craig Gable. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2004. ISBN 0-253-34398-4. OCLC 52622031.
13. "The Reverend and Mrs. W. F. Graham announce the marriage of their daughter Ottie Beatrice, 1925". W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, UMass Amherst. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
14. "Dr. W. C. Jefferson Ends Life in Steelton Home". The Evening News. 1941-12-22. p. 17. Retrieved 2023-02-10 – via Newspapers.com.

External links

• Trailer for What Happened to Ottie B. Graham?, a documentary by her great-granddaughter, writer Aileen Imana Muhammad Lassiter, on YouTube