James J. Kilpatrick
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James Jackson Kilpatrick (November 1, 1920 – August 15, 2010) was an American newspaper journalist, columnist, author, writer and grammarian. During the 1950s and early 1960s he was editor of ''
The Richmond News Leader ''The Richmond News Leader'' was an afternoon daily newspaper published in Richmond, Virginia from 1888 to 1992. During much of its run, it was the largest newspaper source in Richmond, competing with the morning '' Richmond Times-Dispatch''. B ...
'' in Richmond, Virginia and encouraged the Massive Resistance strategy to oppose the
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
's decisions in the ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' ruling which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. For three decades beginning in the mid-1960s, Kilpatrick wrote a nationally syndicated column "A Conservative View", and sparred for years with liberals
Nicholas von Hoffman Nicholas von Hoffman (October 16, 1929 – February 1, 2018) was an American journalist and author. He first worked as a community organizer for Saul Alinsky in Chicago for ten years from 1953 to 1963. Later, Von Hoffman wrote for ''The Washingt ...
and later
Shana Alexander Shana Alexander (October 6, 1925 – June 23, 2005) was an American journalist. Although she became the first woman staff writer and columnist for ''Life'' magazine, she was best known for her participation in the "Point-Counterpoint" debate seg ...
on the television news program '' 60 Minutes''.


Early and family life

Kilpatrick was born and raised in
Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...
. His father lost the family lumber business during the Great Depression, which led to his parents' divorce. Kilpatrick earned a degree in journalism from the
University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...
in 1941. Kilpatrick married sculptor Marie Louise Pietri in 1942. She died in 1997. They had three sons, M. Sean Kilpatrick of Atlanta, Christopher Kilpatrick of New Bern, N.C., and Kevin Kilpatrick. In 1998, Kilpatrick married liberal Washington-based syndicated columnist Marianne Means.


Career and segregationism

Upon graduation, Kilpatrick moved to Richmond, Virginia, and began working for
Douglas Southall Freeman Douglas Southall Freeman (May 16, 1886 – June 13, 1953) was an American historian, biographer, newspaper editor, radio commentator, and author. He is best known for his multi-volume biographies of Robert E. Lee and George Washington, for both ...
, Pulitzer-prize winning author of biographies of General Robert E. Lee and editor of ''
The Richmond News Leader ''The Richmond News Leader'' was an afternoon daily newspaper published in Richmond, Virginia from 1888 to 1992. During much of its run, it was the largest newspaper source in Richmond, competing with the morning '' Richmond Times-Dispatch''. B ...
''. In 1950, Kilpatrick succeeded Freeman as the daily newspaper's editor. Kilpatrick championed the case of Silas Rogers, a young black shoeshine man wrongfully convicted of killing a police officer, and ultimately pardoned as a result of Kilpatrick's research; Kilpatrick received a courage and justice award from a black newspaper in 1953 for his reporting in that case. However, the following year, Kilpatrick aligned himself with the Byrd Organization and became one of the leading advocates of continued
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
during the
Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
. Kilpatrick opposed federal involvement into state-enforced racial segregation, and later opposed enforcement of civil rights legislation. After the 1954 and 1955 Supreme Court decisions in ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' and related cases, Kilpatrick devised "
states' rights In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the ...
" and other rationales which helped convince Virginia's U.S. Senator, Harry Byrd, to advocate the massive resistance strategy in Virginia and claim leadership of the anti-integration movement throughout the South. In particular, Kilpatrick reformulated the
states' rights In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the ...
doctrine of
interposition Interposition is a claimed right of a U.S. state to oppose actions of the federal government that the state deems unconstitutional. Under the theory of interposition, a state assumes the right to "interpose" itself between the federal government a ...
, arguing that individual states had the right to oppose and even nullify federal court rulings. In November 1960, Kilpatrick participated in a television debate about segregation with
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
in New York. Kilpatrick was appointed vice-chairman of the Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government led by attorney David J. Mays. In 1963, Kilpatrick published an analysis of the post-Civil War
Civil Rights Cases The ''Civil Rights Cases'', 109 U.S. 3 (1883), were a group of five landmark cases in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by pr ...
and two pamphlets: "Civil Rights and Legal Wrongs," attacking the
Civil Rights Act Civil Rights Act may refer to several acts of the United States Congress, including: * Civil Rights Act of 1866, extending the rights of emancipated slaves by stating that any person born in the United States regardless of race is an American ci ...
proposed by President Kennedy, and "Civil Rights and Federal Wrongs," attacking expansion of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...
. His arguments for segregation were not entirely based on federalism. In 1963, Kilpatrick submitted an article to ''
The Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely ...
'', "The Hell He Is Equal" in which he wrote that the "Negro race, as a race, is in fact an inferior race." (The magazine's editors rejected the article after the
16th Street Baptist Church bombing The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963. Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter planted 19 sticks of dynami ...
killed four black schoolgirls.) Kilpatrick eventually changed his position on segregation, though he remained a staunch opponent of federal encroachments on the states.Richard Goldstein
"James. J. Kilpatrick, Conservative Voice in Print and on TV, Dies at 89"
''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', August 16, 2010.
Kilpatrick told a Roanoke newspaper in 1993 that he had intended merely to delay court-mandated integration because "violence was right under the city waiting to break loose. Probably, looking back, I should have had better consciousness of the immorality, the absolute evil of segregation." As editor of ''The Richmond News Leader'', Kilpatrick also began the Beadle Bumble fund to pay fines for victims of what he termed "despots on the bench." He built the fund with contributions from readers and later used the Beadle Bumble Fund to defend books as well as people. After a school board in suburban Richmond ordered school libraries to dispose of all copies of Harper Lee's ''
To Kill a Mockingbird ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' has become ...
'', because the board found the book immoral, Kilpatrick wrote, "A more moral novel scarcely could be imagined." With money from the fund, Kilpatrick offered free copies to children who wrote him; by the end of the first week, he had given away 81 copies.


Columnist and author

Kilpatrick began writing his syndicated political column, "A Conservative View," in 1964 and left the ''News Leader'' in 1966.Nafeesa Syeed
"Conservative commentator James J. Kilpatrick remembered"
AP in ''
Tulsa World The ''Tulsa World'' is the daily newspaper for the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and primary newspaper for the northeastern and eastern portions of Oklahoma. Tulsa World Media Company is part of Lee Enterprises. The new owners announced in January 20 ...
'', August 17, 2010.
In 1979 Kilpatrick joined the
Universal Press Syndicate Universal Press Syndicate (UPS), a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, was an independent press syndicate. It distributed lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebe ...
as a columnist, eventually distributed to more than 180 newspapers around the country. Kilpatrick lived in
Rappahannock County, Virginia Rappahannock County is a county located in the northern Piedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia, US, adjacent to Shenandoah National Park. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 7,348. Its county seat is Washington. The name "Rappaha ...
and made the byline of his columns, " Scrabble, Virginia" as more engaging than his actual postal address in Woodville, Virginia. Kilpatrick entered semi-retirement in 1993, shifting from a three-times-a-week political column to a weekly column on judicial issues, "Covering the Courts," which ended in 2008. For many years, Kilpatrick also wrote a syndicated column dealing with English usage, especially in writing, called "The Writer's Art" (also the title of his 1985 book on writing). In January 2009, the Universal Syndicate announced that Kilpatrick would end this column owing to health reasons. His other books include ''The Foxes Union'', a recollection of his life in
Rappahannock County, Virginia Rappahannock County is a county located in the northern Piedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia, US, adjacent to Shenandoah National Park. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 7,348. Its county seat is Washington. The name "Rappaha ...
, in the
Blue Ridge Mountains The Blue Ridge Mountains are a Physiographic regions of the world, physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. The mountain range is located in the Eastern United States, and extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsy ...
; ''Fine Print: Reflections on the Writing Art''; and, ''A Political Bestiary'', which he co-wrote with former U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy and Pulitzer Prize-winning
editorial cartoonist An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary. Their cartoons are used to convey and question an aspect of daily news or curren ...
Jeff MacNelly Jeffrey Kenneth "Jeff" MacNelly (September 17, 1947 – June 8, 2000) was an American editorial cartoonist and the creator of the comic strip ''Shoe''. After ''Shoe'' had been established in papers, MacNelly created the single-panel strip '' Plu ...
.


Television

Kilpatrick became best known for his nine years as a participant on the TV news magazine '' 60 Minutes''. In the 1970s, he appeared in a closing segment called "Point-Counterpoint", opposite
Nicholas von Hoffman Nicholas von Hoffman (October 16, 1929 – February 1, 2018) was an American journalist and author. He first worked as a community organizer for Saul Alinsky in Chicago for ten years from 1953 to 1963. Later, Von Hoffman wrote for ''The Washingt ...
and, later,
Shana Alexander Shana Alexander (October 6, 1925 – June 23, 2005) was an American journalist. Although she became the first woman staff writer and columnist for ''Life'' magazine, she was best known for her participation in the "Point-Counterpoint" debate seg ...
. "If ever I heard an oversimplified fairy tale of the last years in Vietnam, I just heard one from you," Kilpatrick said in one exchange. They peppered their remarks with 'Oh, come on, Jack' and 'Now see here, Shana' and helped make possible even-more combative talk shows, including ''Crossfire''. The debates between Kilpatrick and Alexander were such a feature of contemporary American culture that they were satirized on ''
Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock. ...
'', with Dan Aykroyd's version of Kilpatrick ("Jane, you ignorant slut!") taking on
Jane Curtin Jane Therese Curtin (born September 6, 1947) is an American actress and comedian. First coming to prominence as an original cast member on the hit TV comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'' in 1975, she went on to win back-to-back Emmy Awards for ...
("Dan, you pompous ass!") on "
Weekend Update ''Weekend Update'' is a ''Saturday Night Live'' sketch and satirical news program that comments on and parodies current events. It is the show's longest-running recurring sketch, having been on since the show's first broadcast, and is typic ...
".Legacy.utsandiego.com
/ref> The comedy film ''
Airplane! ''Airplane!'' (alternatively titled ''Flying High!'') is a 1980 American parody film written and directed by the brothers David Zucker, David and Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams in their directorial debuts, and produced by Jon Davison (film prod ...
'' also parodies "Point-Counterpoint", as the Kilpatrick stand-in (played by William Tregoe) shows a lack of concern for the passengers on the stricken airliner: "Shana, they bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, let 'em crash!"


Death

Kilpatrick died at
George Washington University Hospital The George Washington University Hospital is a for-profit hospital, located in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is affiliated with the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The current facility opened on ...
in Washington, D.C., and was survived by his second wife, sons, four stepchildren and many grandchildren. His personal papers, including his editorial files and correspondence, are housed in Special Collections of the University of Virginia Library. Guides and descriptions of Kilpatrick's papers are available through the ''Virginia Heritage'' database.


Works


''The Sovereign States: Notes of a Citizen of Virginia''
Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company Regnery Publishing is a politically conservative book publisher based in Washington, D.C. The company was founded by Henry Regnery in 1947, and is now a division of radio broadcaster Salem Media Group. It is led by President & Publisher Thomas ...
, 1957. * ''The Smut Peddlers: The Pornography Racket and the Law Dealing with Obscenity Censorship''. Doubleday, 1960. * ''The Southern Case for School Segregation''. Crowell-Collier Press, 1962. * ''The Foxes' Union'', EPM Publications, Inc., 1977. *''A Political Bestiary, Viable Alternatives, Impressive Mandates & Other Fables'' (with Eugene McCarthy and Jeff MacNelly), 1978. * ''The American South: Four Seasons of the Land'' (with William A. Bake). Oxmoor House, 1983. * ''The Writer's Art''. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1985. * ''The Ear Is Human: A Handbook of Homophones and Other Confusions''. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1985. * ''Fine Print: Reflections on the Writing Art''. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1993.


References


Further reading

* Chappell, David L. "The Divided Mind of Southern Segregationists," ''Georgia Historical Quarterly,'' Spring 1998, Vol. 82 Issue 1, p45-72 * Friedman, Murray. "One Episode in Southern Jewry's Response to Desegregation: An Historical Memoir," ''American Jewish Archives,'' July 1981, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p170-183, focused on his debates with Kilpatrick * Havard, William C. "The Journalist as Interpreter of the South," ''Virginia Quarterly Review,'' Winter 1983, Vol. 59 Issue 1, pp 1–21


External links

* * Kilpatrick's Columns o
LegalNews.TV
* Shana Alexander's Obituary a
Los Angeles Times
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kilpatrick, James J. 1920 births 2010 deaths American columnists American male journalists American newspaper editors American political commentators American political writers American segregationists White separatists Writers from Oklahoma City Writers from Richmond, Virginia People from Woodville, Virginia University of Missouri alumni 60 Minutes correspondents Journalists from Virginia Writers of style guides Conservatism in the United States