Dawn:
A Charleston Legend

Over twenty years after her death, the life of prolific British author Dawn Langley Simmons remains shrouded in mystery and legend. Born Gordon Langley Hall, the enigmatic Hall moved to the United States as a writer in the 1950’s and then in 1968 underwent one of the first gender affirming surgeries in the country at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

She emerged as Dawn Pepita Langley Hall and returned to her home in Charleston, South Carolina. Her subsequent interracial marriage to auto mechanic John-Paul Simmons and the mysterious birth of their bi-racial daughter Natasha sparked an international furor in the press and deep fear and hatred in the deep south.