Ralph McGill
Activist
Editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper who was a leading public voice in the anti-segregation movement.
His career as a crusading journalist began after he was suspended by Vanderbilt University for an article he wrote criticizing the school.
As the paper's editor-in-chief, and then its publisher, he used its editorial pages to urge readers to accept the equality of races and to end the separate-but-equal policy.
He was born on a farming community near Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee just twenty miles north of Chattanooga.
His brave editorial pieces brought him a Pulitzer prize in 1959, and both presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy enlisted his help in promoting civil rights.