Grace Halsell (May 7, 1923 – August 16, 2000) was an American journalist and writer.

Early life and education

The daughter of writer Harry H. Halsell, she studied at Texas Tech University from 1939 to 1942. During the 1940s, she was briefly married to Andy Fournier, the chief of detectives in the Fort Worth Police Department.

Career

Halsell 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. She wrote 10 books, several of which involved her "passing" as a member of a racial or ethnic minority. For Soul Sister (1969), she used vitiligo-corrective medication to darken her skin and live as an African American for several months. In 1973, she published Bessie Yellowhair, in which she tried to pass as a member of the Navajo. For 1978's The Illegals, she disguised herself as a Mexican immigrant.

Death

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, Texas. Some of her work is housed at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

Books