Book Description
The son of noted journalist and folklorist Joel Chandler Harris, Julian Harris (1874-1963) struggled all his life to carve his own niche in the world and emerge from the shadow of his famous father. As editor of the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, Harris found both his voice and soapbox. There, with his equally talented wife, journalist Julia Collier Harris, he spent the 1920s fighting the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, anti-evolution laws, Prohibition, corruption in state government, and substandard public education. It took uncommon courage to push a progressive agenda in a provincial cottonmill town like Columbus during the twenties and Harris, more than any other man, deserves credit for freeing Georgia from the grip of the Klan. For his efforts, he and his newspaper won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for public service; he was the first Georgian to be so honored.