Jamie Harris Coleman

Jamie Harris Coleman was born on September 20, 1893, in Mayfield, Kentucky. A brief biographical note printed in her 1918 collection Poems says she finished public school there in 1907, then moved to Louisville in 1908 after her mother's death and her father's illness.

That same note says family needs forced her to leave day school and work so that her younger brother and sister could be cared for, but she later returned to study at night school and finished in 1914. It also reports that she had shown a gift for poetry from childhood, began seriously developing it around 1912, and went on to write many poems as well as a play called Ruth the Gleaner, which was performed in Louisville churches.

Her book Poems, published in 1918, reflects the range of her interests and convictions. Its contents include poems on Booker T. Washington, emancipation, prejudice, grief, nature, war, thanksgiving, and Christian faith, suggesting a writer whose voice was shaped by both personal hardship and a deep moral purpose.