The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Jounalism and Civil Rights, 1960 - 1968. Edited by Roy Peter Clark and Raymond Arsenault. Foreword by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller. [Southern Dissent, Edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller].

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, (2002). Signed by Gene Petterson, Roy Peter Clark and Raymond Arsenault. Octavo, gold cloth & white boards (hardcover), 305 pp. Near-Fine, with light foxing (age darkening) to endpapers and edges; in a Near-Fine dust jacket. From dust jacket: The Changing South of Gene Patterson celebrates the work of one of America’s most influential journalists, who wrote in a time and place of dramatic social and political upheaval. The editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1960 through 1968, Patterson wrote directly to his fellow white southerners every day, working to persuade them to change their ways. His words were so inspirational that he was asked by Walter Cronkite to read live on the CBS Evening News his most famous column, about the Birmingham church bombing. This volume includes more than 120 of Patterson’s best pieces, selected from some 3,200 columns. These columns offer probing commentary on the crucial issues of race, civil rights, social justice, and desegregation; some reveal examples of political and moral leadership, drwan from every corner of southern culture. Introductory essays, framing Patterson’s work as journalism and literature, place it in the context of southern history and the evolution of white southern liberalism. Patterson himself contributes a new essay; reflecting on his life, work, and times.