Emma Gelders Sterne

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1894, Emma Gelders Sterne graduated from Smith College in 1916 and returned home to campaign for women’s suffrage. She also founded a school for delinquent children and worked as a newspaper columnist before moving to New York with her husband, Roy M. Sterne. There, she studied writing at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research, sold her first story, and became active in causes including civil liberties and racial equality.

Sterne wrote 44 books, many of them historical or biographical works for children and young adults. Her notable titles include Amarantha Gay, M.D., Some Plant Olive Trees, The Long Black Schooner: The Voyage of the Amistad, I Have a Dream, and They Took Their Stand. She also co-wrote the Kathy Martin nurse series with her daughter Barbara Lindsay under the pseudonym Josephine James, and published some books as Emily Broun. She died in San Jose, California, in 1971.