Edward Kidder Graham, Jr., son of Edward Kidder and Susan Moses Graham, was born in Chapel Hill on January 31, 1911. He was a member of a prominent educational family. His father served as president of the University of North Carolina during World War I and his uncle, Frank Porter Graham, was president of the Consolidated University of North Carolina for a number of years.
Both of Graham’s parents died while he was a boy, and he was raise by his aunt and uncle, Louis and Mildred Moses Graves. Louis Graves was founder and publisher of the Chapel Hill Weekly. Graham attended public school in Chapel Hill and secondary school at the Asheville School for Boys and Woodberry Forest, Orange, Virginia. A 1933 graduate of the University of North Carolina, he received his A.M. degree (Medieval History) from Carolina in 1934 and his PhD. (History) from Cornell University in 1938.
Graham began his professional career at Cornell as assistant to the president, l937-l940. Later he was acting secretary (1940-1941) and secretary of the university (1941-1947). He went to Washington University in l947 as assistant Dean of Faculties. He became Dean of Faculties in 1948, a position he held until l950 when he was unanimously selected as the Chancellor of the Woman’s College.
Upon leaving Woman’s College in 1956, Graham became dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Boston University. In 1962 he was appointed vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Denver. The following year he became President of the College Association of the Finger Lakes, Corning, New York, resigning in July l964 to become dean of the faculty at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. In 1965 he became consultant to the president at Hampton Institute in Virginia, where he remained until 1971. He served as consultant in international studies at New York State University, Albany, from 1971-1972. He died in Elsmere, New York, on March 13, 1976.