Ottie Beatrice Graham, from the 1922 yearbook of Howard University
Born
December 11, 1901
Virginia
Died
March 31, 1944
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Other names
Ottie B. Jefferson (after 1925)
Occupation
Writer
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 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]
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
^Birth and death date as given on her Pennsylvania death certificate, via Ancestry; some sources give her birth year as 1900.