Ralph McGill:A Biography

by Barbara Barksdale Clowse

Ralph McGill's life and work (1898-1969) show how an individual becomes committed to the cause of civil rights and social justice. In Vienna in 1938, while still a sportswriter, McGill felt a "calling" to fight intolerance, hatred, and racial prejudice. He assumed his eventual role of "the conscience of the South" in stages. He became an editor of the Atlanta Constitution, but for years struggled to master political and economic commentary. Until 1948 McGill believed a long period of economic prosperity and social stability would be necessary before desegregation could successfully come to the South. Realizing that change was imminent, he tried to serve as mediator between races and regions. In 1953, after rejecting Christianity for thirty-six years, he reclaimed his faith, rejoined the church, and began to argue for a new pattern in race relations. The 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock was another turning point. There, he said, the South forfeited its last chance to change on its own and would now be forced to accept federal coercion. National syndication of his column in 1957, along with countless speeches and articles, enabled McGill to become the nation's preeminent interpreter of the South.

315 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1998

Reviews

[David Zimmerman]

Ralph McGill, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution from post-WWII through the Civil Rights Movement, was my wife's grand-uncle. I never met him; he died before either of us was born. But I do feel some affinity with him, as he was an editor during a time of particular social turbulence, and I do look up to him. No Southern White in a position of power during the CRM handled anything perfectly, and to read some of their writings with the benefit of hindsight is to sometimes marvel at how unthinking people can be. But McGill rode a fine line generally well, and on balance he wound up on the right side of history, earning a positive nod from MLK Jr. in his letter from a Birmingham jail--a letter otherwise intended to confront the Southern Whites in positions of power who were failing their Black brothers and sisters. This is a whole-life biography, so it helps to have an interest in the man moreso than an interest in the times, but McGill was a man of and for the times, so knowing his story sheds light on our collective history.