Julia Peterkin (1880-1961) was a pioneering American author whose work brought the lives and voices of African Americans in the rural South to the forefront of American literature. Born Julia Mood in Laurens County, South Carolina, she was an educated woman who graduated from Converse College and later married William George Peterkin, a cotton planter. This marriage took her to Lang Syne Plantation, where she immersed herself in the Gullah culture of the African American community living there.
