Ralph McGill

Ralph Emerson McGill (February 5, 1898 – February 3, 1969) was an American journalist and editorialist. An anti-segregationist editor, he published the Atlanta Constitution newspaper despite receiving threats and intimidation such as crosses burned on his lawn from white supremacists terror groups. Martin Luther King Jr. named him in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. He was also one of the first critics of Joseph McCarthy. He won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1959 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. Since his death, he was inducted in the Georgia Newspaper Hall of Fame and has had a school and a road named after him in Atlanta.