Dorothy Randolph Peterson was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jerome Peterson and Cornelia S. White. She had a younger brother named Sydney Peterson. Peterson spent much of her childhood in
Puerto Rico, due to her father's work as the U.S. Consul to
Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. After attending university in Puerto Rico, she attended
New York University and moved to
Harlem in the 1920s. There, she engaged in the artistic community by hosting literary salons, as an early patron of
Fire!! -- A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, and as co-founder of the
Negro Experimental Theater in 1929 with
Regina Anderson. Her efforts to preserve African-American art and culture culminated with her founding of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at
Yale University and the Jerome Bowers Peterson Collection of Photographs of Celebrated Negroes at
Wadleigh High School in Harlem. == References ==