Journalist, editor, newscaster, publicist, public health official, author and the first Black travel influencer, Gerri Major, was born in Chicago on July 29, 1894. Her birth name was Geraldyn Hodges, sometimes given as Geraldine. When her mother died giving birth to her, Major's father arranged for her adoption by an aunt and uncle who lived nearby, Maud Lawrence, and her husband David. The Lawrence family had sufficient wealth to give to Geralydn and she was raised in a well-to-do home. Following elementary school, she attended Wendell Phillips High School, where she excelled academically. She subsequently was awarded a work-study scholarship at the University of Chicago.
On October 8, 1913, while being a university student, she chartered the Beta Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, along with 4 other college women. In the summer months after her graduation, with a Bachelor in Philosophy degree in 1915, Geraldyn Hodges studied at Hampton Institute, in Virginia. During the next school year she taught dramatic art and physical culture at Lincoln Institute, in Jefferson City, Missouri. Not liking the situation there, she returned to Chicago to enter a two-year program at Chicago Normal School so that she could qualify to teach elementary school in that city.
In the fall of 1917, Geralydn served as a teacher-in-training or "cadet" in the Chicago public school system. In December of that year, she interrupted her progress toward becoming a Chicago school teacher in order to marry H. Binga Dismond, whom she had met at the University of Chicago. Before becoming a physician, Binga Dismond was a world record holder in the 440 yards and finished 3rd at the 1915 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. He gave her the nickname "Gerri", and it stuck. During American participation in World War I, while Gerri or Geraldyn served in France, she became a Red Cross nurse in Chicago, leaving that organization in 1918 with the rank of major.
In 1919, Gerri taught at the Stephen A. Douglas Elementary School in Chicago. She left the teaching profession in 1923 when she moved with her husband, to Harlem, during the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. There she launched side-by-side careers in publicity, journalism, and social activism. Major blossomed in Harlem, immersing herself in the arts and the city’s vibrant social scene. Gerri composed and distributed a public announcement for the annual National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Dance in Harlem’s Manhattan Casino. The release, which appeared in the New York Age on March 7, led to the job offer that would prove to be the starting point for her career in journalism.
From that release, the influential Black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, subsequently named Gerri Hodges as the paper's New York social editor. The announcement called Major a leader in Harlem society and a "prime favorite in Gotham's best circles. In 1927, Major began a new column called "Through the Lorgnette of Geraldyn Dismond". It contained essays and reviews on theater, books and cultural topics. From 1925 to 1927, she wrote a weekly column called "New York Society" in which she reported the doings of prominent members of the African American community. Soon afterward she began writing a weekly column of New York social news called "In New York Town".
She also wrote a column for the Chicago Bee, and the following year (1928), she started yet another society column, this one called "New York Social Whirl" appearing in the Baltimore Afro-American. In 1928 Gerri became one of the first, if not the very first, African American women to take on the role of publicist. Located in Harlem on 135th Street the Geraldyn Dismond Bureau of Specialized Publicity developed an extensive mailing list. It established its credentials by landing a contract to publicize an all-Black stage production called "Africana" starring Ethel Waters.
Between 1928 and 1930 Major wrote and presented a review of current events during a New York radio program that aired each week on Sunday afternoon. This made her, as one source put it, “the first Negro woman commercial radio announcer.” The program was the “Negro Achievement Hour,” a variety show featuring talks and music that was carried on two local stations, WABC and WEVD. In addition to newscasting, Major was a program director for the show. By the end of the 1930s she had become "one of the best known Black women in America." She became executive director of a health center on Lenox Avenue in Harlem in 1933 that was operated by the United Health Association.
She and Dismond divorced in 1933, but remained close friends. The following year she was chosen by the Newspaper Guild to work on a welfare publicity project in the Central Harlem Health District. Major took a job with the New York City Health Department’s Bureau of Public Health Information and Education as an administrative assistant in 1936. The job title was a touch misleading as reports reveal that Major was basically a publicist for the department. A news report on Major's appointment said her performance on written and oral civil service examinations and her prior experience resulted in her selection and noted that she was the first African American to be hired into the position.
In 1946 she married her third husband, John Richard Major, a prominent businessman from Atlantic City. During 1951 Major was guest of honor and "woman of the year" at a charity ball held by a New York women's club. In 1952 she was cited for "humane deeds performed in behalf of her community" by a New York impresario, Freddie Fulton. It was her role as travel reporter and occasional tour leader that may be her most important legacy. Women such as Josephine Baker would use their talents to obtain visas to travel abroad. Throughout her adult life Major encouraged her friends and readers to take up international travel as a way to not just venture beyond their neighborhoods.
She wanted to break through the remnants of Jim Crow–era restrictions and lay claim to the benefits and sheer pleasure of seeing other parts of the world. Many Black traveling women would disguise their race by wearing face coverings, giving them the ability to pass as South Asian or Latin. Major’s main mode of transportation at first was steamships. However, international travel was difficult for Black people. Segregation was very much prevalent and White workers could often keep Black passengers from boarding for their destination altogether. Undeterred, Major traveled. Not only did she travel, she made the choice to write about the positives of travel.
Readers of Jet and other Black newspapers of the time such as New York Amsterdam News, The Afro-American, and the Pittsburgh Courier, sought her opinion on all things related to Black social life, as a writer and journalist. In 1953 she began a twenty-five-year career for two sister magazines: the monthly, Ebony, and the weekly, Jet as writer and society editor. She became a household name with her long-running Jet column, “Gerri Major’s Black Society”. The year that she began with Ebony and Jet she was sent to England to cover the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Later she became associate editor, and, in 1967, senior staff editor, the position Major maintained up until her death in 1984.
With the release her notable book, "Gerri Major’s Black Society", she examines notable Black figures and their lives from the 1700s until the 20th Century. Gerri Major was a true Renaissance Woman, holding many important duties over the course of her long life. Major found fame in Harlem and crafted a journalism career that spanned decades. She was successful in a number of overlapping vocations, including journalist, editor, radio announcer and promoter, publicist, public health official, author and community leader. During all of her adult life, she was an active participant in civic organizations that worked to improve the health, education and general well-being of New York's African American community.