Halsell, Grace

Grace Halsell (1923-2000), journalist and author, 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. From 1965 to 1968, she worked as a staff writer for President Lyndon B. Johnson. She was assigned to write official statements and became the highest-ranking woman on his staff at the time. Halsell wrote thirteen books, the most well-known of which was Soul Sister (1969). In her writings she emphasized love and tolerance for others and went to great effort to change her physical appearance to experience how other ethnicities lived. In 2000, Halsell died in Washington, D.C., of complications from treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer related to the medicine she took to darken her skin for Soul Sister research.