Frank Yerby
In Madrid, Spain’s largest cemetery, Cementerio de la Almudena, an African American author was laid to rest in 1991. His life story would span two continents, teaching English at two historically black colleges, one in Florida and one in Louisiana; then during World War II working as a technician at Ford Motor Company for a short stint. In 1952 he would leave America and never permanently return, residing in France for several years and finally settling in Madrid, Spain with his second wife, Blanca.
During the course of his lifetime he would pin several critically-acclaimed short stories and no less than thirty-three novels, at one stretch finishing almost one novel every other year. His colorful characters were fictitious, but they were always set within the framework of actual historical events. He was praised by some for his literary genius and criticized by others for his unwillingness in their eyes to speak more openly on racial injustice in America. Controversial. Intellectual. Prolific. Enigma. Frank Yerby possessed all of these traits and much more. His story begins in 1916 in a city on the Savannah River: Augusta.
Frank Garvin Yerby was born into the multiracial “Little Dublin” community in Augusta, Georgia on September 5, 1916 to Wilhelmina Smythe and Rufus Yerby. Growing up young Frank and his family were members of Union Baptist Church, a daughter church of the historic Springfield Baptist Church. Frank and his siblings attended the prestigious Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, a school established by the world-renowned educator and civil rights activist Lucy Craft Laney. While at Haines Frank and his siblings distinguished themselves in their academic pursuits. In 1931 he received the coveted Physiology Prize. Dr. James E. Carter, III, whose mother Mrs. Marjorie Carter taught at Haines and someone who has an intimate knowledge of the Haines environment recalls how much the teachers talked about young Frank. According to Dr. Carter, Frank was nearly second to none in all things academic.
Frank graduated from Haines in 1933, the same year that Lucy Craft Laney died. In a tribute to his principal and mentor, Frank Yerby wrote the poem “Lucy Laney”, published in the 1936 50th Anniversary Golden Jubilee booklet. It was an early example of his gift for writing that would later manifest itself in his successful short stories and books. After completing his studies at Haines, Frank enrolled at Paine College, located not far from Haines and the community in which he grew up. He would have continued academic success at Paine, also finding time for extracurricular activities like the Drama Club. His senior year Frank Yerby crafted the hymn for his soon to be alma mater.
After graduating from Paine College in 1937 Frank Yerby enrolled at Fisk University in Tennessee, graduating with a Master’s degree in 1938. After Fisk he worked toward a doctorate degree at the University of Chicago for one year. Prior to World War II, Frank taught for a short time at Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, Florida and Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He later moved to Dearborn, Michigan and worked as a technician at the Ford Motor Company. He was later employed as an inspector at Ranger Aircraft in Jamaica, New York.
In the 1940’s Frank Yerby began to grab the attention of the literary world, first with his short stories and then later his captivating and larger than life historical novels. In 1944 he received the O. Henry Memorial Award for his first short story, “Health Card”, which appeared in Harper’s Magazine. Unlike many of his novels, especially his early works, his short stories took on a more serious tone, often addressing the racial problems plaguing a segregated America. “Health Card” looked at World War II from the perspective of the home front, delving into the trauma, both emotional and psychological, experienced by a young African American soldier, whose wife is assumed to be a prostitute by a group of white Military Policemen. He would further explore race in America with “White Magnolias” and “The Homecoming”. In “The Homecoming”, Yerby returns to World War II America, and uses the story of Sergeant Willie Jackson coming home from the Pacific Theater of Operations to illustrate the dilemma faced by many African American soldiers returning from overseas: “How can I return to the status quo, especially a Jim Crow South, after fighting to liberate the world from tyranny?” “Why must I cow tow and smile all the time just to keep Southern whites happy?” Although not as well received by the public as many of his later novels, Frank Yerby was always pleased with the critical success that his short stories garnered.
Two years after the publication of “Health Card”, Frank Yerby would find groundbreaking success with his first novel, The Foxes of Harrow. Through the Foxes of Harrow Frank Yerby gained widespread popularity and critical acclaim, selling nearly 2 million copies worldwide. 20th Century Fox paid him 150,000 dollars for the rights to The Foxes of Harrow (Release Date: September 27, 1947), and would cast Rex Harrison as the cunning and industrious Stephen Fox and Maureen O’Hara as his wife Odalie D’Arceneaux Fox. It would be the first of three novels written by Mr. Yerby adapted by a major Hollywood studio. The other two would be The Golden Hawk (Release Date: October 8, 1952) and The Saracen Blade (Release Date: June 6, 1954). The 1951 publication of A Woman Called Fancy would be the only one of his thirty-three novels set in Augusta.
The publication of The Foxes of Harrow would be the springboard for a writing career that would span nearly five decades. His writing style, the subject matter he tackled and the intricate attention to historical detail garnered him the “King of the Costume Novel” title. Although he was one of the first African Americans to have his face appear on the cover of a book, to many in the United States the fact that he was an African American author was still unknown. After a 15-year marriage to Flora Yerby, Frank began a second phase in his life, not in the United States but in Europe. He moved to Europe in 1952 and few years later he would settle permanently in Madrid, Spain.
During the latter half of his literary career, Mr. Yerby continued to produce very well received novels, but unlike his earlier works, he began to use African American protagonists, as in the 1971 bestseller The Dahomean, which chronicles the life of the son of an African king taken captive and brought to America via the transatlantic slave trade. Other books that veered away from some of his earlier works and lent themselves to a more social conscious writer was An Odor of Sanctity (1965), The Unplanned Voyage (1974) and Speak Now (1969). He took offense to critics that thought of him as less than racially conscious and challenged them to read his novels. He once remarked, “I have fought the struggle more effectively than they have. And since they are people totally lacking in subtlety they haven’t been able to realize that the idea of fighting a battle is to win it, not to talk about it.” According to Frank Yerby, if his critics took the opportunity to read his works, more specifically the ones of the 1960’s and 1970’s, then they would understand that much of his protest would come out through the treatment of his African American characters.
Although living as an expatriate for the last 40 years of his life, his hometown of Augusta still recognized his many achievements and sought to honor him. In May of 1976 Yerby-Tobias Circle, on the west end of the newly renamed Laney-Walker Boulevard was named in honor of Mr. Yerby and fellow Paine College graduate and CME minister Reverend Channing Tobias. In the early 2000’s The Honorable Edward M. McIntyre spearheaded the effort to move Frank Yerby’s boyhood home to the campus of Paine College. The home remained on the campus for several years, but was eventually torn down by the college. A replica of his boyhood home was placed at Paine College on April 20, 2008. In 2006 Mr. Yerby received state recognition for his literary accomplishments when he was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
Despite having to navigate a Jim Crow America, Frank Yerby lived a full and sometimes colorful life. In The Foxes of Harrow he wrote this about Stephen Fox: “But I had the luck to be the odd one. And it carried me out into a good world, full of living. And it will carry me out wherever I want it to-even to you.” Frank Yerby’s intellect and writing prowess took him all over the world. From the classrooms of southern historically black colleges to northern industry transformed to support a world war; to Chicago where he would witness and help lay the foundation for a new “Renaissance” of writers, musicians and artists that would rival in some respects the earlier one in Harlem. He wrote short stories that spoke to the mistreatment of African Americans during World War II and the hypocrisy of the United States, the arsenal of democracy, fighting to rid the world of fascism with a segregated army; his novels sold upwards by some estimates 55 million copies, were translated into more than two dozen languages and sold in over 80 countries.
Frank Yerby was a once in a generation personality. His writing topics, which covered topics from the swashbucklers of the antebellum period to medieval Europe, entertained generations of people the world over.