By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Dr. Aimee Edmondson, an associate professor and graduate director at Ohio University, recently wrote a book titled “In Sullivan’s Shadow: The Use and Abuse of Libel Law during the Long Civil Rights Struggle.”
Q: Describe the focus of your book.
A: The far right has long sown public distrust in the media as a political strategy, weaponizing libel law in an effort to stifle free speech and silence African American dissent. In Sullivan’s Shadow demonstrates that this strategy was pursued throughout American history, as southern public officials filed scores of lawsuits in their attempts to intimidate journalists who published accounts of police brutality against civil rights protestors. Taking the Supreme Court’s famous 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan as my starting point, I work to illuminate a series of often astounding libel cases that preceded and followed this historic ruling.
Q: How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?
A: I have long been fascinated by the Sullivan case, even as an undergraduate journalism student in the 1980s. But I was especially interested in exploring libel law within the context of the 1950s and 1960s as a master’s student after I read Anthony Lewis’ Make No Law, the Sullivan Case and the First Amendment. In particular there was a paragraph that pointed out that Sullivan and its companion cases were just a handful of libel suits filed against the press or civil rights leaders during the 1960s. As I looked for other cases, I was surprised to learn that so many of the suits were filed by police officers and local public officials like Sullivan, who was the police commissioner in Montgomery, Alabama. We might generally assume that after a landmark case like Sullivan, public officials (and public figures after the civil the rights-related A.P. v. Walker) would stop filing libel suits aimed at silencing dissent. However, the suits came in waves for many more years. The last suit I found was filed in 1989 by former Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, suspected of being involved in the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi during Freedom Summer of 1964. He was incredibly litigious into the late 1969s and 1970s, as just one example.
When you think of the stress that civil rights leaders faced – it must have been enormous. But very little had been written about the huge financial and emotional toil they faced in civil court as the libel suits kept coming.
Q: What archives or research materials did you use?
A: The legal files of the NAACP were especially helpful, and now they are digitized and keyword searchable. Not only are the court records there – you can craft conversations between NAACP lawyers in New York and local lawyers on the ground as they wrestled with how to defend themselves against wave after wave of court filings. I also found lots of relevant material in the various papers of my subjects, many of whom were journalists sued for libel who left behind their legal files. This included Ralph McGill’s papers at Emory University; Hazel Brannon Smith, Turner Catledge and Hodding Carter’s papers at Mississippi State; Buford Boone’s papers at Alabama; Harrison Salisbury’s papers at Columbia University; Lillian Hellman’s papers at Texas; John Henry McCray’s and Joseph A. DeLaine’s papers at the University of South Carolina; and William Bradford Huie’s papers at Ohio State.
I also found helpful material at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Atlanta and in Ft. Worth; the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi in Oxford; the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson; the Alabama Department of History and Archives in Montgomery. Also helpful were various collections at the Birmingham Public Library and the Gadsden Public Library, just to name a few.
I visited several courthouses throughout the South, digging through dusty records in the basements of small-town courthouses, including those in Meridian, Mississippi, and New Iberia, Louisiana. It’s thrilling to open boxes that you could tell hadn’t been opened since the court case was adjudicated in the 1960s.
Q: How does your book relate to journalism history? How is it relevant to the present?
A: As a legal historian, I see the two disciplines of law and history as interwoven. Historical context helps us understand court decisions that affect our everyday lives. The U.S. Supreme Court’s rewriting of libel law cleared the way for more brave reporting on civil rights issues, Vietnam and Watergate.
It’s also relevant as President Trump threatens to “open up” libel laws (and Justice Clarence Thomas endorses the idea) and calls for the Supreme Court to reconsider the Sullivan ruling. Blending history and law provides context that can remind us of the importance of the Sullivan ruling and the fragility of libel protections in an era when tough accountability reporting is under attack.
Q: What advice you have for other historians working/starting on book projects?
A: When you are working in an archive, make sure you look at the legal files.
Trial transcripts and depositions can offer dialogue, which is pure gold to a writer. For example, in a libel case deposition from 1989, I can hear former Sheriff Lawrence Rainey’s voice when he talks about the film Mississippi Burning opening old wounds. “It’s the aggravatingest thing,” he said. “These dad-blamed moviemakers and news reporters and all, they just keep it going.”
In Ralph McGill’s case, he gave an incredible amount of financial information as part of General Edwin Walker’s libel suit against him as a result of coverage of the Ole Miss riots in 1962. McGill detailed his salary and all of his debts in court records, and this can lend additional insight into the character and the story. I can’t imagine where else you would find such detail.