Eugene Patterson, editor and columnist, dies at 89

[ProblemAgain]

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Eugene Patterson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and columnist who helped fellow Southern whites understand the civil rights movement, eloquently reminding the silent majority of its complicity in racist violence, died Saturday evening at his Florida home. He was 89.

Patterson was surrounded by family friends when he died of complications from cancer, according to B.J. Phillips, a spokeswoman for the family.

Patterson was editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1960 to 1968, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for editorial writing and doing a signed column every day for eight years. He wrote about the civil rights movement at a time when many Southern newspapers were reluctant to cover it.

Patterson's Sept, 16, 1963, column about the Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls, titled "A Flower for the Graves," was so moving he was asked by Walter Cronkite to read it on the "CBS Evening News."

"A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham," Patterson began the 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."

In the 2004 Discovery Times Channel documentary "Someone's Watching," Patterson recalled being asked by the FBI to print damaging information on the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"He said we have information from our informant (and that means in FBI lingo, a wiretap) that Dr. King is being unfaithful to his wife," Patterson said. "And I said to him, 'We're not a peephole journal. We don't print that kind of stuff.'"

When he was approached a second time, Patterson recalled, "I finally said to him, 'Look, the news story here is not Dr. King's life. It's the misuse of the federal police power by the FBI in trying to damage an American citizen.'"

http://news.yahoo.com/eugene-patterson-editor-columnist-dies-89-041...

a man with ethics and integrity...RIP mr patterson

[LoveLife&Laughter]

Rest in Peace.