Hazel Brannon Smith

Hazel Freeman Smith (née Brannon; February 4, 1914 – May 15, 1994) was an American journalist and publisher, the owner and editor of four weekly newspapers in rural Mississippi, mostly in Holmes County. Her newspapers included the Lexington Advertiser, the second oldest newspaper in the state. She distinguished herself both in reporting and editorial writing, advocating for justice for African Americans in the county and the state.

In 1964, she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, largely for her writing about the Civil Rights Movement in the year of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She received numerous other awards for her work as a publisher and editor.

A lifelong Baptist, Smith described herself as "just a little editor in a little spot. A lot of other little editors in a lot of little spots is what helps make this country. It's either going to help protect that freedom that we have, or else it's going to let that freedom slip away by default."

Biography

Hazel Freeman Brannon was born in 1914 in Alabama City, Alabama. She attended local schools and was raised a Baptist by her parents. In 1930, she graduated at the age of 16 from high school in Gadsden. She showed an early interest in journalism, working on a local paper before college. She attended the University of Alabama and graduated in 1935 with a B.A. in journalism.

After graduation, she went to Durant, Mississippi and bought the failing Durant News of Holmes County. This majority-black county, long dominated by agriculture, was bordered on the west by the Yazoo River and was part of the Mississippi Delta. By 1943 she had turned the Durant paper around.

She bought another weekly, The Lexington Advertiser, based in the nearby county seat of Lexington, where she lived. It was the second oldest newspaper in the state.

Beginning in 1961, Smith faced an outright economic boycott on advertising, as the White Citizens Council increased its opposition after learning that she was printing jobs for African-American activists. Smith attracted support among other newspaper publishers, such as Hodding Carter, Jr. of Greenville, Mississippi. In 1961, he organized a committee to raise money to help her.

In December 1961, Smith began to print the Mississippi Free Press, founded by activists in an effort to get their news out to the African-American community in the state. Most white-owned newspapers carried only negative coverage of their efforts, if any. Smith later undertook other printing jobs for African-American customers: the monthly Baptist Observer and books for the black Baptist Convention. These jobs helped support her newspaper. She also hired blacks to work in the printing plant and became more familiar with them personally and their political struggle.

Initially Holmes County was relatively quiet in terms of civil rights activity, but this changed in 1963 and 1964. In 1964 Smith welcomed the 33 SNCC volunteers who came to the county to educate African Americans and prepare them for registering and voting in what was known as "Mississippi Freedom Summer". Smith wrote, "One of the most popular misconceptions in Mississippi is the idea that if everyone would just leave us alone we would work out all our problems and everything would be fine. . . . The truth is we have been left pretty much alone for nearly one hundred years – and we have not faced up to our problems as well as we should."

In the 1970s Smith finally sold two of her newspapers because of continued financial problems. She was not able to recover financially from economic boycotts. In 1982 her husband died in a fall at home. In 1985 she filed for bankruptcy, and was forced to close her remaining two newspapers, including the Lexington Advertiser. It was the second oldest newspaper in the state, and its building still stands in Lexington, deteriorating and "open to the elements." None of these small newspapers survived the loss of her leadership and changes to the industry.

In 1986 Smith moved to live with her sister and her family in Gadsden, Alabama, her hometown, suffering from early symptoms of apparent Alzheimer's disease. She later moved to be near nieces in Tennessee. She died there in 1994 in a nursing home in Cleveland, Tennessee. Her body was returned to Alabama, where she was buried near family members in Gadsden.

Legacy and honors Smith received other recognition in addition to the Pulitzer Prize: awards from the National Federation of Press Women (1946, 1955), the Herrick Award for Editorial Writing (1956), the Mississippi Press Association (1957). She won the Golden Quill Award of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors in 1963, and in 1964 was named by the National Council of Women as the "Woman of Conscience" that year. She was president of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors in 1981–82.

Death Hazel Freeman Smith died in Cleveland, Tennessee on May 15, 1994, aged 80.

Papers Smith's 1945-1976 papers are available to researchers and held at the Special Collections department of the Mississippi State University Library.

Films Smith was one of the subjects in the documentary film An Independent Voice (1973) about small-town newspaper editors. Her life was dramatized in the ABC-TV movie A Passion for Justice: The Hazel Brannon Smith Story (1994), with Jane Seymour in the title role. The movie aired several weeks before Smith died.