NRJ Book: Ralph Emerson McGill: Voice of the Southern Conscience

Abstract

Ralph Emerson McGill: Voice of Southern Conscience By Leonard Ray Teel (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001), 559 pages Reviewed by Patrick S. Washburn In July 1966, managing editor of Atlanta Journal took seven of us who had recently joined news editorial staff to meet Ralph McGill, publisher of Atlanta newspapers. We saw him for about ten minutes. After we briefly introduced ourselves, he welcomed us to paper and we left. For remainder of my year at Journal, I never saw McGill again and thought little about meeting. But as years wore on and I occasionally ran across his name as one of Southern journalists who had led way in ending segregation, I slowly began to appreciate significance of what had occurred. We had met of whom Atlanta papers were so proud. Now, that man comes alive in a book by Leonard Ray Teel, a former reporter at Atlanta Constitution and now an associate professor of communications at Georgia State University. Based on 14 years of extensive research in primary documents and numerous interviews, he has produced a splendid book that will satisfy both academic historians, who demand rigor, and non-academics, who like lively biographies. It also should be required reading for all newspaper editorial and column writers. Woven throughout book are numerous insights by McGill into what it takes to succeed in demanding grind of continually turning out a daily column as well as crafting editorials that make a difference in society. As Teel notes, McGill's life did not begin auspiciously. Shortly before he was to graduate from Vanderbilt, he wrote a column in weekly student newspaper that wondered why a student lounge had not been built, even though funds had been given for it. Had money been embezzled? The chancellor did not like column, and McGill was suspended. Then, he got into further trouble with a prank when he invited prostitutes to a dance at a rival fraternity. As a result, he never graduated, although later he would receive honorary doctorates. Meanwhile, he already was working at Nashville Banner as a sportswriter, and in 1929 he went to Atlanta Constitution. Over next forty years, although McGill never lost his love of sports, he left sports behind as he became enthralled with politics and dream of what Atlanta could be in newly developing South. A hard-drinking workaholic who continually read three books a week, he sought fame in his column writing, sometimes worrying that it would never come. But it did as he quickly became known as a great storyteller as well as someone who gently led his readers, whether they liked it or not. He was not always gentle in his writing, particularly with short-sighted politicians. As he put it succintly to a friend, Sometimes, you have to step out in center of ring and hit them in nose. What makes Teel's book fascinating is that it slowly takes reader on McGill's journey through segregation period. The reader can see McGill's views changing over years. As implausible as it may seem, he originally was against an anti-lynching law and supported poll taxes. And, at first, he did not speak out against segregation, which in polite Southern society was known simply as the situation. That was way it was. One did not discuss it. …