Pulitzer Prize-wining editor and columnist, Eugene Patterson, famous for his moving argument for civil rights in the column, 'A Flower for the Graves,' passed away Saturday. Patterson was editor of the Atlanta Constitution, as well as managing editor of the Washington Post, and editor of the St. Petersburg Times.?
Eugene Patterson, former chairman and chief executive of the Times Publishing Company and its affiliates, checks his email from his bed in St. Petersburg, Fla., in August. Patterson, a newspaper editor and columnist who helped fellow Southern whites understand the civil rights movement, died, Saturday. He was 89.
Cherie Diez/The Tampa Bay Times/AP
EnlargeEugene?Patterson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and columnist whose impassioned words helped draw national attention to the civil rights movement as it unfolded across the South, has died at 89.
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Patterson, who helped fellow whites to understand the problems of racial discrimination, died Saturday evening in Florida after complications from prostate cancer, according to B.J. Phillips, a family spokeswoman.
Patterson?was editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1960 to 1968, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for editorial writing. His famous column of Sept, 16, 1963, about the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing that killed four girls ? "A Flower for the Graves" ? was considered so moving that he was asked by Walter Cronkite to read it nationally on the "CBS Evening News."
"A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham,"?Patterson?began his column. "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."
"It was the high point of my life,"?Patterson?later said in a June 2006 interview from his home in St. Petersburg. "It was the only time I was absolutely sure I was right. They were not telling the truth to people and we tried to change that."
Patterson?also spoke of what he called his good fortune to work for the Atlanta newspaper and an "enlightened" leadership that encouraged his work.
"We were rather rare editors in the South at that time,"?Patterson?said of himself and Constitution Publisher Ralph McGill.?Patterson?worked under McGill, himself a Pulitzer winner in 1959, and then succeeded him at the helm of the Constitution four years later.
Editor Kevin G. Riley at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called?Patterson's?contributions to the newspaper, Atlanta and the field of journalism "enormous."
"We benefit still from his work and legacy," Riley told The Associated Press via email.
In 1968,?Patterson?joined The Washington Post and served for three years as its managing editor, playing a central role in the publication of the Pentagon Papers. After leaving the Post he spent a year teaching at Duke University.
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