John Temple Graves was born on November 9, 1856, at Willington district, Abbeville County, South Carolina. He was the son of James Porterfield Graves, a general in the Confederate army, and Catherine Floride (Townes) Graves.
He was descended from John Temple Graves, a colonel in the Revolutionary army, and from William Calhoun, an elder brother of John C. Calhoun.
Graves was a member of the class of 1875 of the University of Georgia, but did not graduate. After leaving the university, Graves taught school for a time.
In 1880, Graves wrote and published an account of a local political combat. The ornate manner of his writing proved exactly to the taste of his fellow Georgians, and he was from that time a marked man.
About 1882, he went to Jacksonville, Florida, where for five years, he was editor first of the Daily Florida Union and later of the Florida Herald.
In 1882, Graves went into politics, became Democratic elector-at-large in 1884, and suddenly found himself one of the best-known men in the state.
In 1887, he returned to Atlanta and became for one year editor of the Atlanta Journal. Then, in a search for editorial independence, he removed to Rome, Georgia, and edited the Tribune of Rome.
The Tribune prospered, but the owners and the editor could not agree in politics, and in 1890 the editor resigned. In 1888, he had been Democratic elector-at-large from Georgia.
Graves’s address on the death of Henry Grady (1889) brought him so wide a reputation as a public speaker that he became a lecturer.
He acquired such popularity that by 1908, he had spoken from as many as 1, 900 platforms. Meanwhile, he resumed his newspaper activities.
From 1902 to 1906, he was editor of the Atlanta News and afterward, until the fall of 1907, of the Atlanta Georgian. He was widely, and apparently with some justice, blamed for his part as editor of the News in fanning the racial animosity which exploded in the Atlanta riots of September 1906.
In the spring of 1907, he created further notice by advocating that Roosevelt be made the presidential candidate of all parties. In the following year, he was himself the candidate of the National Independence party for the vicepresidency.
From 1907 to 1915, he was editor of the New York American, and during the period from 1915, almost to the time of his death, he wrote special articles for the Hearst papers and also for a while edited the Palm Beach Post and the Hendersonville Times.
He died at his home in Washington after several months of ill health.
In religion, Graves was a Presbyterian elder who took the Bible literally.
Graves opposed monopolies and war, and in 1923, as a herald of peace, he went about the country delivering his speech “Armageddon. ”
With regard to the African-American question, a favorite theme, he believed that the only way to settle the issue was to transport all African-Americans back to Africa.
Quotations: "The problem of the hour is not how to prevent lynching in the South, but the larger question: How shall we destroy the crime which always has and always will provoke lynching? The answer which the mob returns to this vital question is already known. The mob answers it with the rope, the bullet, and sometimes, God save us! with the torch. And the mob is practical; its theory is effective to a large degree. The mob is today the sternest, the strongest, and the most effective restraint that the age holds for the control of rape. "
On April 17, 1878, Graves was married to Mattie Gardner Simpson of Sparta, Georgia. She wife died, and on December 30, 1890, he was married to Anne E. Cothran.
September 1820 - 1915
21 November 1827 - 3 February 1858
1849 - 3 April 1922
11 October 1869 - 11 November 1950
20 March 1856 - 12 August 1889
25 April 1892 - 19 May 1961
