estate when her husband was unable to oversee af-
fairs, and she succeeded in maintaining the large
farming operations and its enormous workforce of
some 500 Gullah people.
Peterkin began writing in 1921, and Carl
Sandburg encouraged her to publish her work. Her
submission to Smart Set,the magazine of H. L.
MENCKEN, soon led to book contracts. She pub-
lished her first collection, Green Thursday,in 1924
and her first novel, Black April,in 1927. Her 1928
novel Scarlet Sister Mary,which sold more than 1
million copies, was awarded a PULITZERPRIZE.Ad-
ditional works included the novel Bright Skin
(1932), Roll, Jordan, Roll(1933), a collection of es-
says about Gullah life that included photographs
by Doris Ullman, and A Plantation Christmas
(1934), a volume about southern plantation life.
Peterkin was both lauded and criticized for
her portraits of African Americans. Her prizewin-
ning novel Scarlet Sister Maryprompted outrage in
certain quarters of the South because it featured a
powerful heroine of African descent. Peterkin
later was criticized by African-American scholars
and activists who regarded her work as excessive
and fantastical local-color writing without sub-
stantive attention to pertinent social and political
realities.
Peterkin, published additional works in the
1930s, died in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in
- She was buried in the Peterkin Cemetery in
Fort Motte, South Carolina.
Bibliography
Durham, Frank, ed. Collected Short Stories of Julia Pe-
terkin. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1970.
Landess, Thomas. Julia Peterkin.Boston: Twayne Publish-
ers, 1976.
Williams, Susan Millar. A Devil and a Good Woman, Too:
The Lives of Julia Peterkin.Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1997.
Peterson, Jerome Bowers (1859–1943)
A journalist whose lively Brooklyn home and the
legendary meetings there between white and
African-American artists and scholars prompted
novelist CARLVANVECHTENto immortalize the
site in his novel NIGGERHEAVEN.
A self-made journalist, Peterson was a staff
writer for the New York Globebefore he established
the NEWYORKAGE,a paper that came to be allied
closely with BOOKERT. WASHINGTONand his ac-
commodationist policies. He worked closely with T.
THOMASFORTUNE, a contributing editor for the
Ageand Peterson’s partner in founding the New
York Freeman.In 1904 he was appointed consul to
Venezuela. His daughter Dorothy Peterson partici-
pated in the Harlem Renaissance through her work
at the 135th Street branch (HARLEMBRANCH) of
the NEWYORKPUBLICLIBRARY. His son Sidney Pe-
terson was a physician who worked with the New
York City Board of Health.
The Jerome Bowers Peterson Memorial Col-
lection held at the University of New Mexico in-
cludes some 200 photographs of African
Americans, including 82 portraits that Carl Van
Vechten took during the 1920s and 1930s.Bibliography
Harlan, Louis, ed. The Booker T. Washington Papers.Vol.
4: 1895–1898. Urbana, University of Illinois Press,
1975.
Johnson, Abby Arthur, and Ronald Maberry Johnson.
Propaganda & Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of
African American Magazines in the Twentieth Cen-
tury.Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1979.Petry, Ann Lane(1908–1997)
A New England–born novelist and the first
African-American writer to publish a book that
sold more than 1 million copies. Petry, who
achieved success in the years after the Harlem Re-
naissance, moved to New York City, and her time
there as a reporter had a great impact on her liter-
ary sensibilities and writing.
Petry was born in 1908 in Old Saybrook, Con-
necticut, to Peter and Bertha Clarke. Her parents
were respected, middle-class professionals. Her fa-
ther was a pharmacist, and her mother was a shop
owner, chiropodist, and hairdresser. Petry attended
the University of Connecticut and graduated with
a doctorate in pharmacy in 1931. She joined the
family business, following in the footsteps of her fa-
ther, grandfather, aunt, and uncle. She married
George Petry in February 1938, and the couple,
who moved to New York City following their wed-418 Peterson, Jerome Bowers