Grace Halsell

Who was Grace Halsell?

Grace Halsell was an American journalist and writer.

The daughter of writer Harry H. Halsell, she studied at Texas Tech from 1939 to 1942, at Columbia University from 1943 to 1944, at Texas Christian University from 1945 to 1951, and at the Sorbonne from 1957 to 1958.

She worked for several newspapers between 1942 and 1965, including the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the Washington bureau of the Houston Post. She covered both the Korean and Vietnam Wars as a reporter, and was a White House speech writer for President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1968. Halsell wrote thirteen books, the best-known of which was Soul Sister. In 2000, she died in Washington, D.C., of complications from treatment for multiple myeloma.

She bequeathed her papers to the Mary Couts Burnett Library at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Some of her work is housed at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.