The Atlanta Constitution
In the long history of Atlanta’s publishing industry, one particular newspaper stood out as the best – the Atlanta Constitution. Just like its strong competitor, the Atlanta Journal, the Constitution (as it is commonly called) received several Pulitzer Prizes and has nurtured the careers of a number of famous journalists in the world, like Joel Chandler Harris and Ralph McGill.
The Atlanta Constitution was actually first formed in 1868 by Carey Wentworth Styles, an Atlanta entrepreneur and lawyer. As its history reveals, Styles bought the Atlanta Daily Opinion, one of the famous newspapers in the state of Georgia, serving the city of Atlanta, particularly 20,288 residents, and renamed it the Atlanta Constitution. It was noted that this new name was suggested by the United States president Andrew Johnson, who thought it apt for a Democratic newspaper advocating the restoration of constitutional government.
Since months had passed since the renaming and Style moved to Texas and sold his paper to his partner, James Anderson. Anderson, however, subsequently passed it to William Arnold Hemphill, his son-in-law who later on became the paper’s business manager. Hemphill, since his acquisition of the paper, served as the principal owner and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution until 1902. It is also worth noting in 1876, a person named Evan P. Howell bought an interest in the Atlanta Constitution, and became its president and editor-in-chief until 1897. Both Hemphill and Howell had served as mayor of the city of Atlanta during their years as Constitution executives.
Howell, after joining the paper, immediately hired the twenty-six-year-old Henry W. Grady from the Atlanta Daily Herald as a political writer and later managing editor. Then, Joel Chandler Harris was hired as an associate editor and it was him who lifted the Constitution into fame with his “Uncle Remus” column that appeared in the newspaper in 1878. Grady and Harris was later joined by another literary light of the period, the poet laureate Frank L. Stanton, whose poem “Might Lak’ a Rose!” was recited by schoolchildren and set to music.
Henry W. Grady traveled the country as a correspondent and continued writing impressions of the North and its leaders for his southern readers. He also sent reports of southern development to northern papers. And, in 1880 at the age of thirty, he bought one quarter interest in the Atlanta Constitution with $20,000. Knowing that economic development was important to rebuilding the South, Grady used the Atlanta Constitution to promote the region at every opportunity. He died on December 23 in Atlanta at the age of thirty-nine.
After Grady’s death, the young Clark Howell took over leadership of the Constitution. He became the paper’s managing editor in 1897, and the Howell family bought the paper in 1902 and remained on their hands until 1950. It was on 1929 that the Constitution hired a young Tennessean named Ralph McGill as a sport writer, thus introducing the career of the most famous Atlanta journalist since Henry Grady. Throughout his service, he was named publisher of the Atlanta Constitution in 1960 and served in that role until his death in 1969. During his management, the Constitution won Pulitzer Prizes.
It was after McGill’s leadership that James Middleton Cox, a nationally known statesman and journalist, acquired the paper and formed the Atlanta Newspapers, Inc. The Atlanta Constitution continued as a morning paper with liberal editorial bent, and it merged with its famous rival, the Atlanta Journal, in 2001, brining today’s well-known Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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