Reaching the Pinnacle of the “Punditocracy”: James J. Kilpatrick's Journey from Segregationist Editor to National Opinion Shaper

Abstract

Historians who have attempted to account for James J. Kilpatrick's rise from segregationist editor of the Richmond News Leader to nationally syndicated columnist and political pundit argue that he succeeded on the national stage because he repackaged his racism into a more palatable mainstream conservative philosophy. This article argues that any account of Kilpatrick's success also requires looking at how he took advantage of changes in journalism in the second half of the twentieth century, including the rise of television news and public-affairs programming, the increased use of syndicated columnists, and the advent of pundits who entertained as well as explained.

Notes

I would like to thank Dr. David Hein, a historian in the Hood College Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, for his guidance in preparing this article.

Jeff E. Shapiro, “Brilliance and Bias,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 17, 2010.

“Pen of Fire,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 17, 2010.

Jacob Weisberg, “The Buckrakers,” New Republic, January 27, 1986, 16–18.

William P. Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 204–208.

Robert Gaines Corley, “James Jackson Kilpatrick: The Evolution of a Southern Conservative, 1955–1965” (Master's thesis, University of Virginia, 1971), 61.

Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Vintage, 2006), 405–406.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 2–3.

William P. Hustwit, “From Caste to Color Blindness: James J. Kilpatrick's Segregationist Semantics,” Journal of Southern History 77, no. 3 (2011): 670.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 5.

Eric Alterman, Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).

James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking and Broadcasting in American since 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 59–60.

James L. Baughman, Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948–1961 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 2.

Ibid.

Ben Bagdikian, “A Golden Age of Oracles,” Columbia Journalism Review, Winter 1966, 15.

Alterman, Sound and Fury, 67.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 11–15.

Neil A. Grauer, Wits and Sages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 181.

Ibid.

William A. Bake and James J. Kilpatrick, The American South: Towns and Cities (Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House, 1982), 19–20.

Douglas Southall Freeman to David Tenant Bryan, November 17, 1948, box 6, 6626-b, James J. Kilpatrick Jr. Papers, University of Virginia Special Collections; hereafter cited as JJK Papers.

Roberts and Klibanoff, Race Beat, 113.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 29.

David R. Davies, The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 1945–1965 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), x.

Ibid., 23.

Ibid.

James Kilpatrick, interview by Brian Lamb, Washington Journal, CSPAN, February 23, 2001, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/NewsReview786.

“An Interview with James Jackson Kilpatrick,” Quill, October 1975, 14.

See especially Ronald Heinemann, Harry Byrd of Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 332–334; James Thorndike, “‘The Sometimes Sordid Level of Race and Segregation’: James J. Kilpatrick and the Virginia Campaign against Brown,” in The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia, ed. Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew Lewis (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 51–71; and Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 42–66.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 73.

Aniko Bodroghkozy, Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 2.

Ibid., 44.

Ibid., 61.

Ibid., 62–63.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 110.

Bodroghkozy, Equal Time, 64.

“Martin Luther King, Jr. Debates Segregationist Editor,” NBC News, New York: NBC Universal, November 26, 1960, https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=50962.

Ibid.

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 381.

Bodroghkozy, Equal Time, 65.

JJK Papers, box 63, 6626-b.

Alterman, Sound and Fury, 32–36.

Ernest Hynds, “Kilpatrick, Anderson, Buchwald Lead Columnists into the 1980s,” Newspaper Research Journal 2, no. 1 (October 1980): 19–28.

Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture, 121.

Ben H. Bagdikian, “How Editors Pick Columnists,” Columbia Journalism Review, Spring 1966, 43; Ben H. Bagdikian, “Journalism's Wholesalers,” Columbia Journalism Review, Fall 1965, 28.

Bagdikian, “Journalism's Wholesalers,” 30.

Bagdikian, “A Golden Age,” 15.

Kilpatrick to Westbrook Pegler, April 10, 1958, box 28, 6626-b, JJK Papers.

Ibid.

Kilpatrick to James G. Campaigne, October 21, 1958, box 28, 6626-b, JJK Papers.

Account ledger (1963), box 12, 6626-e, JJK Papers.

Robert F. Keeler, Newsday: A Candid History of the Respectable Tabloid (New York: Arbor House, 1990), 353–354.

Ibid.

“An Interview with James Jackson Kilpatrick,” Quill, October 1975, 17.

Grauer, Wits and Sages, 3.

Bagdikian, “How Editors Pick Columnists,” 45.

Publicity materials for “A Conservative View” column (undated), box 42, 6626-jkm, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick to John Hunt, January 31, 1966, box 5, 6626-b, JJK Papers.

Hustwit, “Cast,” 644.

Editorial, “Denied Whom, What?,” Richmond News Leader, October 2, 1964; editorial, “The Elastic Clause,” Richmond News Leader, October 5, 1964; editorial, “The American Algeria,” Richmond News Leader, November 17, 1964; editorial, “Zealots on the Bench,” Richmond News Leader, December 3, 1964.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” December 19/20, 1964, box 1, 6626-l, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” January 7, 1965, box 1, 6626-l, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” February 16, 1965, box 1, 6626-l, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” July 29, 1965, box 1, 6626-l, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” August 19, 1965, box 1, 6626-l, JJK Papers.

Editorial, “Who Killed the Mockingbird?,” Richmond News Leader, January 10, 1966.

Editorial, “Enemies of the South,” Richmond News Leader, January 11, 1966.

Editorial, “And While We’re Voting,” Richmond News Leader, February 4, 1966.

Editorial, “One More Nail,” Richmond News Leader, March 11, 1966.

Editorial, “Oakland in the Test Tube,” Richmond News Leader, May 16, 1966.

Editorial, “‘To Fulfill These Rights,’” Richmond News Leader, June 6, 1966.

Editorial, “What They Want,” Richmond News Leader, October 5, 1966.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” April 23, 1966, box 1, 6626-l, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick, “Asking the Race Question,” Richmond News Leader, October 28, 1966.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” August 22, 1967, box 1, 6626-p, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick, “A Conservative View,” March 18, 1969, box 1, 6626-p, JJK Papers.

Hynds, “Kilpatrick,” 26.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 204.

Alterman, Sound and Fury, 60.

Ibid., 61.

Ibid., 59–62.

Ibid., 75–77.

Ronald N. Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley, The Space of Opinion: Media Intellectuals and the Public Sphere (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 72.

Alterman, Sound and Fury, 74.

Hilts, “Saga of James J. Kilpatrick,” 13.

Alterman, Sound and Fury, 62.

Ibid., 63.

Ibid., 64.

Jacobs and Townsley, The Space of Opinion, 43.

Philip J. Hilts, “The Saga of James J. Kilpatrick,” Potomac magazine of the Washington Post, September 16, 1973, 13.

James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (New York: Pantheon, 1996), 89–90.

Morton Kondracke, “James J. Kilpatrick,” Washingtonian, October 1973, in box 9, 6626-e, JJK Papers.

JJK to Mr. Hart, July 24, 1973, box 1, 6626-e, JJK Papers.

Hilts, “Saga of James J. Kilpatrick,” 14.

Interview with author, June 15, 2011.

Alan Hirsch, Talking Heads: Political Talk Shows and Their Star Pundits (New York: St. Martin's, 1991), 163.

Edith Efron, “Why Two Able Men Turn Themselves into Caricatures,” TV Guide, July 27, 1974, A-5, A-6.

James Kilpatrick to Edith Efron, August 5, 1974, box 17, 6626-h, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick to Shana Alexander, September n.d., 1974, box 1, 6626-r, JJK Papers.

Kilpatrick to William Leonard, April 22, 1975, box 1, 6626-r, JJK Papers.

Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick, 211.

Kilpatrick interview.

Alterman, Sound and Fury, 88.

Grauer, Wits and Sages, 186.

Hilts, “Saga,” 13.

Grauer, Wits and Sages, 191.

Roberts and Klibanoff, The Race Beat, 112.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Atwood

Elizabeth Atwood is an assistant professor of journalism in the Department of English and Communication Arts, Hood College, 401 Rosemont Avenue, Frederick, MD 21701, [email protected]