The Fugitives were a group of friends living in Nashville who met every few weeks to discuss poetry and literature, and were encouraged during a visit by well-known poet Witter Bynner to publish their own poems that were shared at each meeting. The group published the first issue of The Fugitive in April 1922; it included seventeen poems under various pseudonyms. The magazine ceased publication in December 1925 after five issues, as several members were planning to or had already left Nashville. Two members of the group, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren, later became United States Poet Laureate.

John Hubert Overall was a student at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) when he submitted his completed thesis in 1928. Born in 1897, Overall joined the US Navy at the age of 20, serving from September 1917 until February 1919, the last year of the war. He married Clarice Juanita Green in 1924, and the couple attended MTSU together, and soon after had two sons. Overall went on to be the head of the History Department at Mississippi State College, but spent a number of years in ill health, and died at the Veteran’s Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas on February 23, 1956. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.