Biography

1953. Queens, New York is his birthplace, and he feels that his years as a taxi driver make him a true New Yorker. A product of New York's public school system from the very beginning, he started at P.S. 37 in Springfield Gardens and finished his Ph.D. in English at the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan.

Dexter Jeffries was an English major at Queens College where he had his first teaching experience as a tutor. He also drove a cab to pick up extra cash to make ends meet. Although he was accepted into an MA program at City College after graduation in 1975, he chose instead to join the United States Army. With a three-year stint in a combat engineer battalion in West Germany, he realized that being a soldier overseas in a foreign country earned him a graduate degree, just an unconventional one.

After his discharge in 1979, he finished that MA in English at City College on the GI BIll; again he drove a Checker cab on the weekends. However, he experienced teaching again, this time instructing sections of freshman composition. Since 1980 he has taught English at various units of the City University of New York and at Pratt Institute. In 1995 he was nominated for Distinguished Professor of the Year at Pratt Institute.

In 1996, in conjunction with the film department at Pratt Institute, Dexter produced and directed a documentary film, What's Jazz; it explores jazz and its influence on poetry and film from the 1930s to 1950s.

In 2003, he published his first book, Triple Exposure: Black, Jewish and Red in the 1950s. In June 2018 his play "White Out," a one act play about war and peace, was produced by the Gallery Players Theater. Jeffries lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, New York.