Grace Halsell was an American journalist and writer. She was born in May 7, 1923. 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. 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, including the critically acclaimed and controversial Soul Sister for which she took pills used to alleviate pigmentation problems in order to darken skin and pass as black, and Journey to Jerusalem about Christian, Jewish, and Muslim families in the Holy Land. In August 16, 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.