Her father, Leigh Whipper, was a stage and Hollywood screen actor, who hailed from a prominent literary and social activist family.
Leighla's paternal grandmother, Frances Anne Rollin, wrote the first diary of a Southern black woman published as well as the first full-length biography authored by an African American.
[5] During her time as a journalist, Whipper interviewed Mary Pickford, Lon Chaney, Josephine Baker, and Father Divine.
[1] Whipper also wrote songs featured in Soundies produced for black audiences by African American football pioneer Frederick "Fritz" Douglas Pollard and his Suntan Studios on 125th Street.
[3] From 1949 to 1986, Leighla co-owned, with her mother, the Spuyten Duyvil, a restaurant in Saratoga Springs popular with the horse racing crowd.
During her later years, Whipper lived in the Hudson River Valley and enjoyed playing piano, writing, painting, and crocheting.