For the second year, events will highlight the literary legacy of an Augusta-born literary giant.
Frank Yerby wrote 33 novels, selling an estimated 60 million copies worldwide. Twelve of those were New York Times bestsellers and three were adapted into major motion pictures.
“Augustans can be proud of the fact that the first African American author to become a millionaire from the sale of his books is from Augusta. His legacy spans two continents,” according to Corey Rogers, executive director of the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History.
In honor of his 109th birthday Sept. 5, two events will highlight his accomplishments.
Olivia Gaines and Jeffrey Jones will lead a discussion of his book “The Dahomean” at 6 p.m. Sept. 4 at the Frank Yerby House on the Paine College campus and at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 5, there will be a screening of the film “The Golden Hawk” at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History.
Last year’s inaugural Yerby celebration featured a book bench dedication at the Laney museum and a street renaming.
Born in Augusta to a mixed-race couple, Yerby studied under Lucy Laney at the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. Laney died the year he graduated.
A graduate of Paine College, Yerby became famous for his novels in the 1940s. Three of them were turned into films. Published in 1946, “The Foxes of Harrow” was made into a movie starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O’Hara in 1947. “The Saracen Blade” was published in 1952 and made into a film starring Ricardo Montalban in 1954, and “The Golden Hawk,” published in 1948 and released on film in 1952.
Starring Rhonda Fleming and Sterling Hayden, “The Golden Hawk” is an adventure film focusing on French privateer Kit “The Hawk” Gerardo during the Franco-Spanish-English war in the 17th century.
Yerby left Augusta after graduating from Paine in 1937 and attended Fisk University. The racism he’d experienced in his lifetime led to his 1955 move to Spain where he died in 1991. He was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2006.
Yerby began his career writing short stories. His first short story, “Health Card,” was published in “Harper’s Magazine” in 1944 and won the O’Henry Memorial Award for best short story, according to his biography at the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame website.
The story focused on the “emotional and psychological impact of racism on a young African American soldier, whose young wife is assumed to be a prostitute by a group of white military policemen,” the bio said.
His early short stories dealt heavily with the issue of racism.
When he began writing novels, he pivoted to themes that were more likely to sell copies, according to Rogers in a 2024 Augusta Good News article. Many of his novels were set in the South including “A Woman Called Fancy” that is set in Augusta.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s won multiple Georgia Press Association awards and is the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
