Welcome
to the Alabama Newspaper
Hall
of Honor
Nov.
1, 2003
Ralph B. Draughon Library
Auburn University
Photos
and Web page by Ed
Williams
willik5@auburn.edu
Professor
Department
of Communication
and Journalism
Auburn
University
Inductees
James E. (Jimmy) Mills
Editor
Birmingham Post-Herald
John
B.
Stevenson
Editor
The Roanoke Leader
Richard Mills, son of the late Jimmy Mills, accepts plaque honoring
his father.
Seated from left are Felicia Mason, APA executive director; Ann Smith
of The
Eufaula Tribune, chairman of the APA Hall of Honor Committee; Jim Cox
of
The Clarke County Democrat, president of the Alabama Press Association;
John Carvalho of the AU Department of Communication and Journalism;
and John Hachtel, assistant vice president, AU Communications and
Marketing.
Acknowledgment
By Richard G. Mills
Backward, turn
backward, O Time in your flight / make me a child again, just for
tonight . . .
Members of the audience listen to induction of James E. (Jimmy)
Mills to Hall of Honor.
John W. Stevenson, editor and publisher of The Randolph Leader,
accepts plaque honoring his father, the late John B. Stevenson.
Family members of Jimmy Mills.
Back row, left to right: William Hamilton, Sr. (grandson-in-law),
William
Hamilton, Jr. (great-grandson), Dr. Ronald Snow (grandson-in-law),
Georgia
(Mills) Snow (granddaughter), David G, Mills (grandson).
Front row, left to right: Demaris Mills (daughter-in-law), Richard G.
Mills
(son), Katherine (Mills) Hamilton (granddaughter).
Family members of John B. Stevenson.
John B. Stevenson is second generation family member to be inducted
to
the Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor. John W. Stevenson and his
brother,
David Stevenson, look at plaque honoring their grandfather, Olin H.
Stevenson.
Olin Stevenson was inducted to the Hall of Honor in 1964.
At left is Sam Harvey, editor of The Advertiser-Gleam.
Harvey's father,
Porter Harvey, was inducted to the Hall of Honor in 2000. At
right is Phil Sanquinetti,
president of The Anniston Star. Looking on is Vanessa Sorrell
Burnside, a
member of the staff of The Randolph Leader.
Retired Birmingham News editor Jim Jacobson, left, chats
with Richard Mills.
Monica Hill, left, of the School of Journalism at the
University of North Carolina-Chapel,
and a former intern at The Randolph Leader chats with Roanoke mayor
Betty Ziglar.
Auburn journalism professor Ed Williams, left, and Richard Mills.
Williams interviewed Mills' father, Jimmy Mills, in 1995 when he was
writing "The Press of Alabama: A History of the Alabama Press
Association.
The Christmas Tree Fire
By ED WILLIAMS
If
anyone asks, tell them I'd like to be remembered
as a crusading
editor," Jimmy Mills told me in 1995.
I was writing a history
of the Alabama Press Association
at the time,
and my research
took me to
Birmingham to interview Alabama's
oldest living
newspaperman.
James E. (Jimmy)
Mills, who died March 5, 1998, at age
97, told
me that he wanted
to be remembered as a crusading editor.
As editor of
the old
Birmingham Post and later the
Birmingham
Post-Herald from 1931
to 1966, one of Mills' legacies is a
landmark Supreme Court decision that strengthened
First Amendment rights.
He fought
against loan sharking, for removal of the
Alabama poll taxes,
and for the
lowering of electric rates in Birmingham. He
also established the
Goodfellows Fund in 1935 to provide
toys, candy,
fruit and nuts
for poor children at Christmas.
The
program continues
today.
When I think of
Jimmy Mills, I will remember him best
for a poignant story
he told me of a Christmas Eve fire that he covered when
he was a young
assistant editor at The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City.
It
happened in
the pre-Depression days, sometime in the
late 1920s, on a
cold Christmas
Eve in a rural Oklahoma community.
"It was cold as
hell, blizzardy ... snow all over the
ground,
and
sleet," Mills recalled.
"It was at a little community at a railroad crossroads.
All of the
people ...
most of the people in the community, were at the little
church for a
Christmas Eve
program. They had the Christmas tree all
lighted with the
candles on it. And the tree caught
fire. And the people in
the church all
rushed to get out the door, and there
they pressed
together
as a crowd.
"The windows had bars
on them to keep people from coming into
the little church and stealing things at night. They couldn't get
out the windows. There was no escape. Practically everybody in the
community was killed.
"I drove down
there with another reporter. We drove all
night.
"As I said, it
was just cold as hell, and we slid off
the road one
time. We didn't have
chains, and the road was a block of
ice. And we had
to go out and
find boards, anything that we could use to
sort of pry under
the wheels. I got
a big board, I think it was a two-by
six, and put it under another board,
and the board hit me on the head.
"It hit me so hard, I thought
my head was gone,
and I felt to see if
it was still
there.
"We got there about
daylight, and we were the first
newspaper people
there. We would dictate
to The Daily Oklahoman, to the
rewrite desk. We didn't
have time to sit down and write
a story.
"I went into one
of the houses, and there were still
burning
coals in the
fireplace. I saw a dog lying in front of
the fireplace
waiting for his family
to come home, the childrens'
stocking
hanging on
the mantel.
"And nobody
there. The
entire family was dead."
Mr. Mills' voice
quivered, and his lips trembled. He was
silent for a few
moments. Then he added,
"I'll never forget what I saw.
But that's what a
newspaper
reporter does, he covers the good ... and the
bad."
When I think of
Jimmy Mills, it will be as a crusading
editor
who changed laws,
but I'll also remember him as a
gentle, kind,
sensitive
individual who cared about people and believed
that a
newspaperman
could make the world a better place.
And I'll remember
the story that he told me of the
Christmas
tree fire in a
little Oklahoma community nearly 70 years
ago.
(Ed Williams is a
professor in the Department of
Communication and Journalism at
Auburn University)
Interviews with Alabama’s senior
newspaper men and women
Conducted by Ed Williams at Saturday
luncheon
APA 125th Anniversary Convention in
Montgomery
Feb. 24, 1996
From "The Press of Alabama: A History
of the Alabama Press Association," by Ed Williams
Chapter 12
James E. (Jimmy) Mills, age 95
(Retired)
Born July 28, 1900
Editor, The Birmingham Post
and the Birmingham Post-Herald,
1930-1967
You are the senior newspaper man in the state of
Alabama. You were editor of the old Birmingham Post and later the
Birmingham Post-Herald from 1930 until your retirement in 1967.
You are probably best known for a landmark Supreme
Court decision in Mills vs. Alabama. Until 1966, Alabama law forbid the
state’s newspapers from publishing election-day editorials. Birmingham
was in the middle of a bitter change of government election in 1962,
and an editorial ran in the Birmingham Post-Herald on election day
urging citizens to vote for an alternative form of government. The
mayor-council proposition carried, but James E. Mills was arrested and
charged with violating the Alabama Corrupt Practices Act.
“At the time you wrote that editorial, were you
making a deliberate challenge to the state law of the time?
“No, I wasn’t making a deliberate challenge at all.
I was just trying to throw out the present city government so we could
replace it with some decent government.”
Were you ever actually jailed on charges of
electioneering?
“No, but I thought I might have an opportunity to
have a lot of fun if I did go to jail. My predecessor as editor of the
old Birmingham Post, Ed Leach who ended up as editor of The Pittsburgh
Press, did turn jail time into a big party. The Alabama attorney
general came up from Montgomery and demanded that he stop the press and
end publication of a story. Ed told him he could just go to hell.
“So they arrested him, and Ed went to jail for a
week and he had more fun and the people of Alabama had more fun for a
week than they had ever seen before or since. He really had a big time.
They brought him drinks, cigarettes and delicacies seldom seen in city
jails. They even brought a band down to play for him. He had a great
time.
“When the sheriff’s deputy came up with the warrant
for my arrest, he said, ‘Well, you just sign your own warrant.’ I
thought about going to jail like Ed Leach did and then decided it
wouldn’t be worth it. I just won’t have any fun. And we let the deputy
go about his way.”
Prior to your trial date, a judge ruled the
anti-electioneering law to be unconstitutional, but the Alabama
Supreme Court reinstated the charge.
Mills. vs. Alabama reached the U.S. Supreme Court on
appeal, and the judgment was reversed on May 23, 1966, with an Alabama
native, Justice Hugo Black, writing the opinion for the high court.
Will you recall where you were at the time you heard the news, and your
reaction at the time?
“You know, at my age, my chief complaint is that I
don’t have a memory, but I’ll never forget where I was or what I did.
Elise (my wife) and I had been up to a meeting of the American Society
of Newspaper Editors in Montreal that year. The meeting was over and we
decided to take a little vacation up there. We wanted to go up to
Quebec on the French side of the St. Lawrence River there. As we got
over there, of course, we found most of the people speaking French
only. We had a time driving, but we had a lot of fun.
“From our Quebec hotel window we could look down on
the river and watch the big ocean vessels coming in.
“We were out one morning walking around town to see
what we could see of interest and returned a little after noon and the
telephone’s red light was blinking and blinking, and there were several
notes under our door.
“I had calls from New York and calls from
Washington, and calls from Birmingham. I said, ‘Mimi, (Elise Mills’
nickname) all hell has broken loose someplace.’
“I had many calls and had to decide where to call
first. One was from Jack Howard, calling from the New York office of
Scripps Howard. I hurriedly got on the phone and and called him.
“Jack said, ‘All is forgiven. You can come home.’
“I said, ‘What did you say?’
“‘All is forgiven. you can come home.’
“I said, ‘Jack, I don’t understand.’
“Jack said, ‘Oh hell. The Supreme Court just handed
down a decision in your behalf. You can come home.’
“Then, of course, I had all the other calls to
answer, among them the Associated Press and United Press. I had to sit
down then and figure out something to say that would make some sense.
That’s what I did. I prepared a statement I was willing to be quoted on
in papers all cross the country. It was not easy. That finished our day
-- a big day never to be forgotten.”
--30--
Thanks for visiting my Alabama
Newspaper
Hall of Honor Web page!
The next Hall of Honor
induction
ceremony
will be in fall 2004. Details later.
Ed Williams
Professor, Department of Communication and Journalism
willik5@auburn.edu
Tichenor Hall 217
Auburn University, Ala. 36849