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'' in

Richmond, Virginia Richmond ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city (United States), independent city since 1871. ...

and encouraged the Massive Resistance strategy to oppose the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the '' Brown v. Board of Education'' 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 and later Shana Alexander on the television news program ''

60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style o ...

''.

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 List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Oklahoma, most populous city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat ...

. His father lost the family lumber business during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

, which led to his parents' divorce. Kilpatrick earned a degree in journalism from the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

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

, and began working for Douglas Southall Freeman, Pulitzer-prize winning author of biographies of General Robert E. Lee and editor of '' The Richmond News Leader''. 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 separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, ...

during the Civil Rights Movement. 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'' and related cases, Kilpatrick devised "

states' rights In United States, American politics of the United States, political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments of the United States, state governments rather than the federal government of the United States, ...

" 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

doctrine of interposition, 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. 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 and two pamphlets: "Civil Rights and Legal Wrongs," attacking the Civil Rights Act proposed by President Kennedy, and "Civil Rights and Federal Wrongs," attacking expansion of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 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 published six times a year. It was published weekly from 1897 until 1963, and then every other week until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influ ...

'', "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 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'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', 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 Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist whose 1960 novel ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and became a classic of modern American literature. She assisted her close friend Truman ...

's ''

To Kill a Mockingbird ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' is a 1960 Southern Gothic novel by American author Harper Lee. It became instantly successful after its release; in the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' ...

'', 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'', August 17, 2010. In 1979 Kilpatrick joined the Universal Press Syndicate as a columnist, eventually distributed to more than 180 newspapers around the country. Kilpatrick lived in

Rappahannock County, Virginia Rappahannock County is a county (United States), county located in the northern Piedmont region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, US, adjacent to Shenandoah National Park. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 7,3 ...

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

, in the

Blue Ridge Mountains The Blue Ridge Mountains are a Physiographic regions of the United States, physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands range. The mountain range is located in the Eastern United States and extends 550 miles southwest from southern ...

; ''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 The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

-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 current ...

Jeff MacNelly Jeffrey Kenneth MacNelly (September 17, 1947 – June 8, 2000) was an American editorial cartoonist and the creator of the comic strip ''Shoe (comic strip), Shoe''. After ''Shoe'' had been established in papers, MacNelly created the single-panel ...

Television

Kilpatrick became best known for his nine years as a participant on the TV news magazine ''

''. In the 1970s, he appeared in a closing segment called "Point-Counterpoint", opposite Nicholas von Hoffman and, later, Shana Alexander. "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'' (''SNL'') is an American Late night television in the United States, late-night live television, live sketch comedy variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Michaels and Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC. The ...

'', with Dan Aykroyd's version of Kilpatrick ("Jane, you ignorant slut!") taking on Jane Curtin ("Dan, you pompous ass!") on " Weekend Update". The comedy film ''

Airplane! ''Airplane!'' (alternatively titled ''Flying High!'') is a 1980 American disaster film, disaster comedy film written and directed by Jim Abrahams and brothers David Zucker, David and Jerry Zucker in their List of directorial debuts, directoria ...

'' 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 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, 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

External links

* * Kilpatrick's Columns o
LegalNews.TV
* Shana Alexander's Obituary a

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kilpatrick, James J. 1920 births 2010 deaths American columnists American male journalists American newspaper editors American political commentators American political writers American segregationists Writers from Oklahoma City Writers from Richmond, Virginia People from Woodville, Virginia University of Missouri alumni Journalists from Virginia Writers of style guides Sigma Alpha Epsilon members Conservative media in the United States