Willard Motley

Willard Francis Motley was an American author. Beginning as a teenager, Motley published a column in the African-American oriented Chicago Defender newspaper under the pen-name Bud Billiken. He worked as a freelance writer, and later founded and published the Hull House Magazine and worked in the Federal Writers' Project. Motley's first and best known novel was Knock on Any Door (1947), which was made into a movie of the same name (1949).