Flora Belle Surles was born on October 20, 1887, in Crenshaw County, Alabama, the daughter of Mary Ellen (King) and Robert Lewis Surles. She attended business school in Montgomery and graduated from Alabama Girls Technical College. In 1917 she went to Washington, D.C., to represent the business interests of a group of southern lumbermen. After World War I she took a secretarial post with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, where in 1924 she met Jeannette Rankin.
FBS returned to the south in 1927 and earned an A.B. at Alabama College. She then moved to South Carolina, where from 1935 to 1941 she was supervisor of WPA historical records and research projects. In 1968 she published a biography, Anne King Gregorie. FBS and AKG were close friends and shared a house in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. Esther R. Gregorie, the donor of these papers, is AKG's sister-in-law.
From the guide to the Papers, 1917, 1935-1973, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
