Claude Fox Sitton
1925 - 2015
Claude Sitton, whose powerful and influential reporting for the New York Times and the News & Observer on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, set the standard for journalistic excellence and helped transform the national debate on civil rights.
From 1958 to 1964, Mr. Sitton wrote about every aspect of the movement, from voting rights and school desegregation to church bombings and the unsolved killings of civil rights workers and was awarded the Pulitizer Prize for commentary in 1983.
From 1958 to 1964, Mr. Sitton wrote about every aspect of the movement, from voting rights and school desegregation to church bombings and the unsolved killings of civil rights workers and was awarded the Pulitizer Prize for commentary in 1983.
Nobody in the news business would have as much impact as he would — on the reporting of the civil rights movement, on the federal government’s response, or on the movement itself. Story by story, Sitton was showing himself to be the leading reporter of the civil rights movement, bringing attention to incidents that drew in other reporters and got action in Washington.”
Claude F. Sitton was born in Atlanta to Cluade B. Sitton, a railroad conductor, and Pauline Fox Sitton, a high school mathematics teacher. He was raised on a farm in Rockdale County with his only sibling, Paul Lyon Sitton, who would go on to become the first administrator of the Urban Mass Transportation System.
Sitton graduated from Conyers High School in 1943. Upon graduation, he served in the Merchant Marine before enlisting in the United States Navy after the outbreak of World War II, serving aboard a landing ship on missions to retake the Philippines through the duration of the war.
Sitton graduated from Conyers High School in 1943. Upon graduation, he served in the Merchant Marine before enlisting in the United States Navy after the outbreak of World War II, serving aboard a landing ship on missions to retake the Philippines through the duration of the war.
At the end of the war, Sitton returned to Georgia and enrolled in Oxford College, transferring to Emory University in Atlanta after one year. He served as editor -in-chief of the school newspaper, The Emory Wheel, and received his bachelor of arts degree in journalism in 1949. He then began his career as a copy reader and wire service reporter, where he earned a reputation for excellence in reporting.
Sitton's distinguished career as a journalist spanned over half a century. He worked as a news agency reporter and editor for the International News Service in Miami, Florida and Birmingham, Alabama. He then reported for United Press in Nashville, Atlanta, and New York City.
In 1953, Sitton married Eva McLaurin Whetstone and the couple would have four children: Lauren Lea, Clinton, Suzanna, and McLaurin.
From 1955 to 1957, Sitton served as United States Information Officer and Press Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Accra, Ghana. In 1957, he went to work for the New York Times and in 1958, became their chief Southern correspondent at their Atlanta bureau assigned to cover the civil rights movement, a position he held for six years. Although based in Atlanta, Sitton traveled throughout the south, from Virginia to Texas, coving all the flashpoints and fault lines of the national civil rights movement, recognized for his rare insight and clarity of reporting. The Times coverage of the civil rights movement became the model for newspapers around the country. Sitton’s courageous work at the Times prompted Newsweek to hail him as “the best daily newspaperman on the Southern scene.” In 1964, Sitton was named National News Director of the Times.
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In 1968, Sitton moved to the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina and after four years became the editor of the paper. He was also the editorial director and vice president of the News and Observer Publishing Company, publishers of the News and Observer and the Raleigh Times. In addition, Sitton served on the board of directors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and the National Conference of Editorial Writers.
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Sitton challenged major public officials and institutions with a strong, progressive voice, making him a leader in investigative journalism. Authors Roberts and Klibanoff describe the reach of influence:
His phone number would be carried protectively in the wallets of civil rights workers who saw him, and the power of his byline, as their best hope for survival.”
Claude Sitton was on the first bus in a convoy of Freedom Riders that went from Alabama to Mississippi. He was at the University of Alabama in 1963 when Alabama Govenor George C. Wallace took his “stand in the schoolhouse door” in an effort to prevent students of color from enrolling there. Sitton covered the riots in the wake of the desegregation of the University of Mississippi and the murder of NAACP official Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi.
On June 12, 1963, just hours after civil rights leader Medgar Evans was murdered at his home in Jackson, Mississippi, Claude Sitton snapped this picture as black protesters carrying American flags marched toward a wall of white police officers carrying automatic rifles. The police hit a girl in the face with a club, wrestled a middle-aged woman to the ground, and arrested 145 people.
His September 15, 1962 New York Times article about the Sunday morning bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama that left four girls dead, made the front page:
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The four girls killed in the blast had just heard Mrs. Ella C. Demand, their teacher, complete the Sunday school lesson for the day. The subject was "The Love That Forgives."
During the period between the class and an assembly in the main auditorium, they went to the women's lounge in the basement, at the northeast corner of the church.
The blast occurred at about 10:25 A.M. (12:25 P.M. New York time).
Church members said they found the girls huddled together beneath a pile of masonry debris."
His articles on a broad range of national and international subjects for the News and Observer were the basis of his being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1983. Two years later, in 1985, Sitton was elected to the Pulitzer Prize board, which is comprised of 15 members, the president of Columbia University, and the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.
Sitton moved to Oxford in 1990 where he and his wife, Eva bought the Branham House on Wesley Street. He spent his retirement making extensive renovations to the home, engaging in community activism, serving on the transportation committee, which was formed to fight the expansion of the Covington Airport, and teaching a seminar at Emory about press coverage of the civil rights movement. He also served as a founding member of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, on the Board of Couselors at Emory at Oxford, and as a lay member of the Supreme Court Commission on Disciplinary Enforcement.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Sitton’s other honors include the George Polk Career Award in 1991 and the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2000.