Jill Gragg Gresham (center) with sisters (l-r) Jean Gragg McGuire, Joyce Walker Harris, Joann Walker Perkinson, and Juliette Walker Pool, ca. 2000s.

Born to Clarence Wiley Gragg and Eunice Hardin Gragg in 1952, Jill Gragg Gresham attended the segregated Roberts School in Acworth in the first and second grade. In 1960, she moved to Atlanta with her family and attended Haugabrooks Academy, Harper High School, and Douglass High School. After working in her home and raising her daughter Crystal Gresham Giles, Gresham took a job as a nursing assistant at Northside Hospital and worked for the Democratic National Committee as head receptionist for three years in advance of the 1988 presidential convention. She worked as a receptionist for Underground Atlanta in the 1990s and as a bus driver for Fulton County Schools in the 2000s. Today, she works for Willie A. Watkins Funeral Home and lives in the Cascade neighborhood of Atlanta.