Building Resentment: How the Alabama Press Prepared the Ground for New York Times v. Sullivan

Abstract

The 1964 Supreme Court case of New York Times v. Sullivaa which gave American news organizations strong protection against libel suits from public officials, grew out of the civil rights turmoil in the Deep South. One aspect of that background was the simmering resentment that white Southerners had long felt toward outsiders who passed judgment on the South in racial matters. This sore spot in the Southern psyche became a specialty for certain editors in the 1950s, such as Grover C. Hall Jr., of the Montgomery Advertiser. Hall's editorial campaign against the “hypocrisy” of outside coverage of the South's racial troubles is examined here as part of the context out of which the Sullivan case emerged. The paper looks at how built-up resentment exploded when the sit-in movement of 1960 triggered a series of events in Montgomery that led Police Commissioner L.B. Sullivan to file his $500,000 libel suit against the Times. It argues that the theme of Southern editorial resentment against “Yankee” coverage helped shape the way the Alabama courts favored Sullivan, which, conversely, helped push the Supreme Court toward a resounding, unanimous ruling against Alabama.