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Gene Patterson Resources |
The Making of...
Roy Peter Clark describes how "The Changing South of Gene Patterson" came to be.
Jan. 22, 2003
Lessons for Journalists
Wisdom from Patterson's work for a new generation of journalists.
Jan. 22, 2003
The Preacher and the Editor
Roy Peter Clark on Patterson's correspondence with Martin Luther King, Jr. From the St. Petersburg Times.
Jan. 19, 2003
Courage to Seek Change
Gregory Favre on Patterson's legacy.
Nov. 18, 2002
Inviting Change, Day by Day
The AJC's Teresa K. Weaver discusses Patterson's life.
Nov. 10, 2002
Patterson's Columns
A Flower for the Graves
About the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.
Sept. 16, 1963
She Paid $7.75 and Sent Thanks
About a minor -- but in its way, remarkable -- traffic accident.
Sept. 13, 1960 | |
Eugene Patterson was born on a farm near Adel, Georgia in 1923. He received his A.B. degree in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1943. During World War II Patterson served as a tank platoon leader with General George Patton’s Third Army. After leaving the army, he became a reporter for the
Temple (Texas) Daily Telegram and the
Macon (Georgia) Telegraph. Patterson joined the United Press news service in 1948, working first in Atlanta and later serving as a manager in New York City and a bureau chief in London, England.
In 1956, he became the executive editor of the Atlanta Constitution and succeeded Ralph McGill as editor in 1960. During his tenure at the newspaper, Patterson earned the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
Gene wrote directly to his fellow white Southerners every day, working to persuade them to change their ways. His words were so inspirational that he was asked by Walter Cronkite to read — live on the CBS Evening News — his most famous column about the Birmingham church bombing. Gene wrote at the height of the civil rights movement, amid real and threatened violence, to anyone who bucked Jim Crow. He wrote when Southerners, wanting to make sense of the civil rights movement, looked to one another for courage, leadership, and for a moral compass in a world seemingly coming apart. He wrote when newspapers mattered much in "making" news by what they reported, or ignored, and what they encouraged people to do.
In 1968, Patterson joined The Washington Post and served three years as its managing editor. After leaving the Post he spent a year teaching at Duke University. Patterson assumed the editorship of the St. Petersburg Times in 1972 and in 1978 succeeded Nelson Poynter as chief executive officer of the Times Publishing Company and chairman of the Poynter Institute. He retired from the Times and the Poynter Institute in 1988.
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Photo by Jim Stem
Gene Patterson speaks at Poynter as Roy Peter Clark looks on. |
Mr. Patterson holds honorary degrees from more than 12 institutions including Harvard, Duke, Indiana, and Emory. He served as the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for 1977-78. In 1980 Patterson was awarded the William Allen White National Award for journalistic merit and in 1994 he won the Elijah Parish Lovejoy journalism award. Patterson served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University for 11 years. An endowed professorship in journalism and communications has been established at Duke University in his honor.
In 2002 the Poynter Institute's Roy Peter Clark and USF historian Ray Arsenault edited a collection of Patterson's Atlanta Constitution columns for a book called The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960-1968.
