Frances Gaither (1889–1955)

Frances Jones was the granddaughter of a slave owner. Her family moved from Tennessee to Mississippi during her childhood. In 1912 she married Rice Gaither, a journalist with the New York Times. Frances Gaither gained fame for her work The Fatal River: The Life and Death of La Salle (1931), a biography of the French explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the discoverer of the Mississippi River. During the 1930s, she wrote popular books for children. She is best known for the three novels she wrote about American slavery, Follow the Drinking Gourd (1940), The Red Cock Crows (1944), and, Double Muscadine (1949).