Ira Brown Harkey Jr. was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher whose courageous advocacy for racial justice and the rule of law placed him among the most consequential journalists in Mississippi history.
Born Jan. 15, 1918, in New Orleans, Harkey earned a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University and later a doctorate in political science from Ohio State University. He worked as a reporter and feature writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune from 1939 to 1942 and again from 1946 to 1949.
In 1949, Harkey moved to Mississippi, where he became editor, publisher and president of the Pascagoula Chronicle. He also served as president of the Gulf Coast Times in Ocean Springs and Advertiser Printing Inc. in Pascagoula.
Harkey soon began challenging newspaper practices that reflected the rigid racial divisions of the era. He eliminated routine racial identification when race was irrelevant to a story, integrated coverage of Black residents into the newspaper’s general news columns and extended courtesy titles to Black citizens.
Those changes were controversial in segregated Mississippi, but Harkey persisted. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, his increasingly outspoken opposition to segregation made him a target of intimidation. A cross was burned outside his home, and Harkey and his newspaper faced threats and economic pressure.
Rather than retreat, Harkey used his editorial page to challenge segregationists with reason and an unwavering belief in the rule of law. His defining moment came during the 1962 crisis over James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi. As Gov. Ross Barnett attempted to prevent Meredith from enrolling, Harkey defended the authority of the federal courts and condemned the resistance that ultimately led to violence on the Oxford campus.
For his commentary on the Meredith crisis, Harkey received the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. That year, he also received honors from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, Sigma Delta Chi and the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
Harkey left the Chronicle in 1963 and turned to teaching and writing. He served on the faculty of Ohio State University, was a visiting professor at the University of Alaska and lectured at the universities of Montana and Oregon.
His 1967 memoir, The Smell of Burning Crosses, recounted his years as a Mississippi editor and the personal and professional consequences of challenging segregation. He later co-authored The Story of Noel Wein with Dr. Alton Ochsner.
In 1992, the ACLU of Mississippi presented Harkey with the Ernst Borinski Civil Libertarian Award. He died Oct. 8, 2006, at age 88.
At a time when defending equality and the rule of law carried enormous personal and professional risks, Ira Harkey demonstrated the power of a determined editor and an independent newspaper to challenge injustice. His courage, conviction and faith in reason remain an enduring example of journalism at its best.
