Author and activist Louise Meriwether, who wrote the novel ‘Daddy Was a Number Runner,’ dies at 100

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Louise Meriwether, the author and activist whose debut novel “Daddy Was a Number Runner” is widely regarded as a groundbreaking and vital portrait of race, gender and class, has died. She was 100. Her book was published in 1970 and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Along with such contemporaneous works as Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” it helped mark the rise of Black women voices in literature. In 2016 the Feminist Press and TAYO Literary Magazine launched the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize for “debut women/nonbinary writers of color.”