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RALPH McGILL
COASTAL INSTITUTIONAL DISTRIBUTORS
Voice and
Conscience
Division Of Coastal Fruit Co., Inc.
of the
Complete Suppliers to the Food Service Industry
r.a en Foods — Canned Foods — Restaurant Supplies
Paper and Janitorial Supplies
Walterboro Phone 549-2524 Charleston Phone 723-2305
SOUTH
by NORMAN SHAVIN *
P. O. Box 1157, Walterboro, S. C. 29488
High Point Bank & Trust Co.
Commercial Banking
Member Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
HIGH POINT, N. C.
THE CITIZENS & SOUTHERN
NATIONAL
106 South Patterson St.
1200 North Patterson St.
VALDOSTA, GEORGIA
ROBERTS INSURANCE AGENCY
Insurance — Mutual Funds
VALDOSTA, GA.
PHONE 242-4560
Cody Smith Walt Carter
Connie Ferrell
GEORGIA PLATE GLASS CO.
215 W. Savannah Phone 242-5285
Valdosta, Ga.
GLASS FOR ALL PURPOSES
Ralph McGill was intensely
hated and profoundly loved.
A few hours after he died on
February 3, the Atlanta Con
stitution received a telegram.
It read: “At last my prayers
have been answered.” The
newspaper, on which he had
served as reporter, editor and
publisher, also received a
phone call from a Negro wait
ress. “What are we gonna do
without him?” she wept.
He was, said Atlanta’s May
or Ivan Allen Jr., “the voice
and conscience of the South.”
He was, said Mrs. Martin
Luther King Jr., “a Souther
ner who had the courage to
see the sickness in his society
and the wisdom to try to heal
it.”
Reactions to Ralph Emer
son McGill’s death came from
leaders of journalism, gov
ernment, business, civil
rights, religion, from friends
—and enemies. They spanned
the spectrum of emotions that
framed the life of this small
town Tennessean who rose
from career uncertainty as a
youth to lavishly honored
journalist who persistently
goaded his beloved South,
and the nation, to reach for
the greatness within their
grasp.
His page one column in the
Constitution beamed hope to
those who had lost all but
hope. It also presented his
enemies with a focal point
for their irrational anger.
Though his life was frag
mented by his generous shar
ing of time with those who
called on him, he managed to
display the kind of profes
sional discipline that made
his writing consistently pun
gent, thoughtful, and pro-
^ Mr. Shavin, former writ-
ter for Atlanta Journal
and Constitution, is cur
rently the dynamic as
sistant to the south
eastern director for the
U. S. Department of
Health, Education and
Welfare.
vocative. It was typical of
his schedule that hours before
he died he was addressing a
Negro high school assembly
and that he was stricken at
the home of a Negro friend—
just two days before his 71st
birthday.
As much as he was a
champion of the Negro, so,
too, was he a beacon to the
Jewish community.
In 1937, it was a Rosenwald
Fellowship—the first of a
string of awards—which
proved a turning point in
McGill’s life. Though he had
come to the Constitution from
Nashville in 1929 to write
sports, his columns roamed
the diversity of his interests.
The Fellowship, • which hon
ored his farm reporting,
enabled McGill to travel Eur
ope where he reported on
Hitler’s murder of Austria.
There, McGill saw freedom
perish. His life changed irre
vocably—and for the next 30
years, the world was his beat.
In 1946—four years after
being named editor—McGill
was in Germany, covering the
Nuremburg trials. He also
made his first visit to the
Middle East, writing of the
displaced persons problem in
relation to newly-emerging
Israel. It was the beginning
of McGill’s affection for
Israel, an affection that lasted
all his life. (As recently as
January 14 he wrote: “Israel
is valuable to the world in
precept and example. If the
Arab leadership had given
their people a mere part of
what Israel has given hers in
education and freedom, the
Arab world would not now be
so sterile.”)
In the post World War II
period McGill was deeply
concerned with the growing
intensity of a hate campaign
at home spawned by the Ku
Klux Klan. His hard-hitting
columns, some based on in
formation he drew from the
Anti- Defamation League’s
Southern office, exposed the
Klan at every opportunity.
The Columbians, a uniformed
The Southern Israelite