William Alexander Graham, Jr. was born on December 26, 1839, in Hillsborough, North Carolina. A Confederate veteran, Graham was a prominent farmer and state legislator (elected in 1874, 1878, and 1905) who served as the state's commissioner of agriculture from 1908 until his death in 1923. He was a notorious white supremacist. Graham died in Raleigh on December 24, 1923.