Knowledge Bank

The American South is often characterized as a place of tradition, where time and progress seem to slow to a crawl. William Bradford Huie was born in this region in 1910, shortly before one of the most dynamic periods of social change in American history. He lived through two world wars, the African American civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and other periods of dramatic upheaval in American society. Many white Southerners intensely resisted change and fought any outsiders who they presumed were altering their way of life. As a seventh-generation Southerner, William Bradford Huie might have done the same. In fact, he responded in the opposite direction, and supported the dismantling of Jim Crow through his work as a notable journalist of the 20th century. Huie dedicated his life to documenting stories that he believed would drive social change. Some of his most notable work included investigative journalism on the cases of Emmett Till, Ruby McCollum, and James Earl Ray. He did not limit himself just to the civil rights movement, however, as he also wrote about World War II and other significant issues of his time. When choosing causes to support, Huie continued to come back to two key philosophical pillars: that the true story had to be told and that justice was achieved for all, a philosophy that I will call "honest populism." Huie certainly believed in the movement for racial justice, but he worked in other situations for which this personal philosophy demanded action. William Bradford Huie's philosophy of honest populism was particularly evident in five works of his: "The Story Teller", The Crime of Ruby McCollum, The Execution of Private Slovik, He Slew the Dreamer and his investigation on the murder of Emmett Till. This personal philosophy was the common thread that connected Huie's journalism.