by Carly Gallagher
William “Bill” Emerson Jr., former reporter and Atlanta bureau chief for Newsweek before joining the journalism school faculty, died on Aug. 25, 2009 at his home in Atlanta, Ga.
William “Bill” Emerson Jr., former reporter and Atlanta bureau chief for Newsweek before joining the journalism school faculty, died on Aug. 25, 2009 at his home in Atlanta, Ga.
During his years as a reporter, Emerson covered the civil rights movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott, school desegregation and Ku Klux Klan cross burnings. His reporting shed light on the escalating race relations conflict in the South.
An Associated Press obituary quoted Emerson, “We knew we had to just tell the damn truth. The truth may be plenty good or plenty bad, but believe me, it’s always plenty.”
After retiring as editor-in-chief for the Saturday Evening Post, Emerson taught magazine writing at the then-College of Journalism and Mass Communications in the 1970s and 1980s, and he called it “the only respectable job [he] ever had.”
“Emerson was a hero. He was a World War II veteran, a Harvard graduate, and a true larger-than-life personality who risked his life to report on the civil rights movement. Emerson was part of the cadre of faculty who had spent years in the journalism profession acquiring a rich storehouse of experience, and the students admired him for it,” said Dr. Lowndes “Rick” Stephens, advertising and public relations professor at the journalism school since 1976.
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