Black Augustans shaped the world’s cultural stage.
“Jessye Norman and James Brown are the most recognizable,” said Corey Rogers, Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History executive director.
However. author Frank Yerby made his own impact in the literary and film world, but his name is not as recognizable. In honor of his 108th birthday Sept. 5, a series of events will highlight his accomplishments.
Cheryl Corbin and Jeffrey Jones will lead a discussion of his book “A Woman Called Fancy” will be at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 4 at the Frank Yerby House on the Paine College campus; at 5 p.m. Sept. 5, there will be a ribbon cutting of an author’s bench at the Laney Museum; at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 5, there will be a screening of the film “The Foxes of Harrow;” and at 10:30 a.m. Friday, there will be a street naming of Frank Yerby Street at the corner of Eighth and Hall Streets.
Born in Augusta to a mixed-race couple, Yerby studied under Lucy Laney at the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. She died the year he graduated, Rogers said.
On the book bench, which contains the titles of his novels and short stories, there will also be a poem he wrote in Laney’s honor.
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.
Yerby left Augusta after graduating from Paine in 1937 and attended Fisk University. He experienced racism first hand, leading to his 1955 move to Spain where he died in 1991. He was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2006.
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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, said Rogers. Many of the novels were set in the South including “A Woman Called Fancy” that is set in Augusta.
Yerby has fallen out of memory unless someone studies his works in an academic setting, said Rogers who wants to revive that memory and give attention to an Augusta author.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for 36 years. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
