Hazel Brannon Smith
Hazel Freeman Brannon Smith (February 4, 1914, Alabama City, Alabama - May 15, 1994, Cleveland, Tennessee), the owner and editor of four weekly newspapers in rural Mississippi, was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
A lifelong Baptist, she described herself as "just a little editor in a little spot. A lot of other little editors in a lot of little spots is what helps make this country. It's either going to help protect that freedom that we have, or else it's going to let that freedom slip away by default."
In 1930, she graduated from high school in Gadsden, Alabama, at the age of 16. Graduating from the University of Alabama in 1935 with a B.A. in Journalism, she went to Durant, Mississippi and bought the failing Durant News, making it such a success by 1943 that she purchased the Lexington Advertiser in the neighboring town of Lexington, Mississippi. She edited and published the Lexington Advertiser from 1943 to 1983. In 1956, she acquired the Banner County Outlook (Flora, Mississippi) in 1956 and the Northside Reporter (Jackson, Mississippi) in 1956.
Read more about Hazel Brannon Smith: Pulitzer Prize, Films, Publications
Famous quotes containing the words hazel and/or smith:
“For spring had entered the capital
Walking on gigantic feet.
The smell of witch hazel indoors
Changed to narcissus in the street.”
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“For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into “the masses.” And where is the David who can slay this giant?”
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