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Frank Garvin Yerby ( – ) was an American writer, best known for his 1946 historical novel The Foxes of Harrow.
As a child, Yerby attended Augusta's Haines Institute, a private school for African Americans founded by Lucy Laney, from which he graduated in 1933. In 1937, he graduated from Paine College with a B.A. in English, and earned his M.A. in Dramatic Arts from Fisk University in 1938.
In 1938, he began courses for a doctorate in English at the University of Chicago, but left school for financial reasons in 1939. He was a professor of English at Florida A&M University from 1939 - 1940 and then Southern University in Louisiana from 1940 - 1941, before moving to Detroit and New York, where he worked in wartime defense industries.
He began his literary career while he was a student at Paine College by publishing poetry, starting with the poems "Miracles" and "Brevity" in the September 1934 issue of New Challenge, a literary magazine published by Dorothy West. Two years later, Yerby would publish his first short story, "Salute to the Flag," in the November 1936 issue of The Paineite, the student newspaper of Paine College. He would continue to publish poetry and short stories while he was a student at Paine College and Fisk University. While he was a student at the University of Chicago, he worked for the Federal Writers' Project, writing about religious groups he observed on the south side of Chicago as part of the social history The Negro in Illinois under the supervision of the dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham.
Yerby continued to publish short stories and wrote the manuscript of a protest novel, "This is My Own," about a black steel worker turned boxer who comes to a tragic end while he worked in the defense industry. That manuscript was rejected, but the editor Muriel Fuller of Redbook encouraged him to send her something else. He sent her the short story "Health Card." She decided it was unsuitable for Redbook, but she sent it to Harper's, which published it in 1944. "Health Card" won the prestigious O. Henry Memorial Prize for best short story. The success of "Health Card" earned Yerby a book contract with Dial Press. The rejection of "This is My Own" caused Yerby to abandon protest literature in favor of historical fiction.
In 1946, he published The Foxes of Harrow, a Southern historical romance, which became the first novel by an African American to sell more than a million copies. In this work he faithfully reproduced many of the genre's most familiar features, with the notable exception of his representation of African-American characters, who bore little resemblance to the "happy darkies" that appeared in such well-known works as Gone With the Wind (1936). That same year he also became the first African American to have a book purchased for screen adaptation by a Hollywood studio, when 20th Century Fox optioned Foxes. Ultimately, the book became a 1947 film of the same name starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Production Design (Lyle R. Wheeler, Maurice Ransford, Thomas Little, Paul S. Fox).
In some quarters, Yerby is best known for his masterpiece The Dahomean (1971). The novel, which focuses on the life of an enslaved African chief's son who is transported to America, serves as the culmination of Yerby's efforts toward incorporating racial themes into his works. Prior to that, Yerby was often criticized by blacks for the lack of focus on African-American characters in his books.
In 2012, The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article featuring an at-risk child whose life was turned around by reading Yerby books that one of his teachers was secretly providing to him.
Yerby left the United States in 1952, in protest against racial discrimination, and moved to Nice, France, for three years. In 1955, he moved to Madrid, Spain where he remained for the rest of his life. Yerby married Blanca Calle-Perez in 1956.
Yerby died from liver cancer in Madrid and was interred there in the Cementerio de la Almudena, the biggest Spanish cemetery.
In 2013, the Augusta Literary Festival created an award to honor Frank Yerby. This award is given to three fiction authors from a submission pool.
In 2023, the Georgia Historical Society, in partnership with the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, Haines Alumni Association, and Paine College, erected a Georgia historical marker in Augusta, Georgia recognizing the life and career of Frank Yerby.
George R. R. Martin cites Frank Yerby as an influence on his own writing.
Veronica T. Watson published an anthology of Frank Yerby's short stories, The Short Stories of Frank Yerby (2020). It includes five previously published and eleven previously unpublished short stories.
(2025). 9780252037696, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252037696
Novelist
Yerby was originally noted for writing romance novels set in the Antebellum era South. In mid-century, he began writing a series of best-selling historical novels ranging from the Athens of Pericles to Europe in the Dark Ages. Yerby took considerable pains in research and often end-noted his historical works. In all, he wrote 33 novels.
Private life
Yerby married Flora Helen Claire Williams (1921 - 2001) in 1941. They had four children. The couple separated in 1955, and their divorce was finalized in 1956.
Posthumous honors
In 2006, Yerby was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
In popular media
Uncle Percy in Thomas Mullen's Darktown is partly based on Frank Yerby.
Novels
Short stories
Poems
Magazine articles
Journal articles
Film adaptations
Further reading
(2025). 9780252036392, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252036392
Categories: African-american Novelists, American Historical Novelists, 1916 Births, 1991 Deaths, Writers From Augusta, Georgia, Federal Writers' Project People, 20th-century American Novelists, American Male Novelists, 20th-century American Male Writers, Novelists From Georgia, Paine College Alumni, 20th-century African-american Writers, African-american Male Writers
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