Grant Harper Reid

Before Grant Harper Reid became an author, he struggled with the written word because he was one of the first black kids bused out of Harlem to a White school in the Bronx. The kids in the White school were more educationally advanced. Some of them called him Black Nigger, and Grant had guarded reservations about expressing himself in class for fear that the racist students would repeat the racial insults. It took Grant years to catch up with his writing style. But because of his lifelong desire to become an author, he never threw in the towel or gave up.

Grant Harper Reid later graduated from Bard College with a Degree in the Arts studying editing at Beatle John Lennon's apartment. After graduating from Bard College, he studied with the National Academy and Television Arts and Sciences in conjunction with actor Ossie Davis' New Cinema Artists Institute. Grant has labored primarily on major motion pictures, music videos, television productions, and commercials for connections and paychecks, not as a career.
Three significant events primed Grant to write this entertainment biography about his Grandfather, Producer/Director Leonard Harper. At one year old, the Apollo Theater manager requested that baby Grant become the New Year’s baby. Grant was to be carried and danced out on stage by Jackie Wilson. Although his mother nixed the idea believing that Jackie might toss her son out into the audience, the request left a profound influence once baby Grant grew up. At 16 years old, while a photography student in a poverty program in 1969, Reid met, hung out with, and photographed Jimi Hendrix in Harlem. In 1978 at age 25 years old, Grant directed Michael Jackson in a Motown/Commodores Entertainment documentary.
While self-research, Grant unintentionally stumbled upon a Harlem Renaissance book in Harlem’s local Countee Cullen library. The book mentioned his famous Harlem Renaissance grandfather and changed Reid's life forever. Reid dropped everything and spent decades fastidiously investigating his grandfather's life, talking to old-timers, and undertaking research in innumerable libraries and institutions, which took him as far away as the Theater Museum of London. He wanted to learn all he could about Leonard Harper and discovered him to be the most prolific producer/director and at the centerpiece of Harlem's famed Jazz Age.
Rhythm For Sale tells the story of Leonard Harper’s rise from a tiny Southern Medicine Show dancer who jigged for pennies to becoming one of the greatest floor-show and Colored Musical Comedy producers who ever lived. Reid now shares all that he has learned in his Grand Prize 5-Star Award-Winning biography Rhythm For Sale. In 2018 Grant received the NAACP Black History Month Founders Day Award for "Rhythm For Sale."
Grant's second book Harlem Bible rediscovers the History, Soul, and Spirit of Harlem through the author’s eyes. Harlem Bible is about a black kid growing up in Harlem and the suburbs of Teaneck, N.J., and due to troubling circumstances, is forced to become a man. Reid's black books are unlike many of the other Negro books full of racial pomposity where the authors are constantly trying to prove to white people that we are equal to them.
The author is a proud sponsor of the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington D.C., after having uncovered and donated his great-great-grandfather Friday Hamilton's many Civil war records to the institution. Friday Hamilton is memorialized on the Civil War Memorial's wall of honor. Grant's photographic works appear in Electric Gypsy-Jimi Hendrix, The Illustrated Jimi Hendrix, Experience Hendrix, and Univibes. His album photographs appear on Voodoo Soup, First Rays of the New Rising Sun, and Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock.