Remembering AJC's Eugene Patterson

In the 1960's, at the height of the civil rights turmoil, as the South was dealing with desegregation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was a beacon of enlightenment.  As a liberal Southerner, I could feel some pride in Atlanta and its newspaper as "the City too busy to hate," was proclaimed by Mayor Hartsfield.

The combination of publisher Ralph McGill and editor Eugene Patterson, both liberal giants of journalism, made the AJC a positive force for change in a progressive direction in the 60's.

Patterson was editor from 1960 to 1968 and won a 1967 Pulitzer Prize for his editorial writing.   His response to the Birmingham church bombing that killed four little girls was so moving that Walter Cronkite invited him to read it on the CBS Evening News.

That editorial began:
"A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham.  In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her.

"Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand. ... We who go on electing politicians who heat the kettles of hate. ... (The bomber) feels right now that he has been a hero. He is only guilty of murder. He thinks he has pleased us. We of the white South who know better are the ones who must take a harsher judgment."

Patterson went on from here to be the Washington Post managing editor, where he played a role in the publication of the "Pentagon Papers."   Later he had a distinguished career at the St. Petersburg Times, which he built into one of the best newspapers in America.

Patterson died this week at the age of 89.   We here in Atlanta owe him a huge debt of gratitude for appealing to our better selves, for helping our city find the right moral path through social turmoil.

Ralph