Jack Nelson

John Howard Nelson (October 11, 1929 – October 21, 2009) was an American journalist. He was praised for his coverage of the Watergate scandal, in particular, and he was described by New York Times editor Gene Roberts as "one of the most effective reporters in the civil rights era." He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960.

Youth

Nelson was born in Talladega, Alabama. His father ran a fruit store during the Great Depression. Nelson moved with his family to Georgia and eventually to Biloxi, Mississippi, where he graduated from Notre Dame High School in 1947.

Early career After graduating from high school Nelson began his journalism career with the Biloxi Daily Herald.

Nelson appeared on the CBS television program, I've Got a Secret, on the May 4, 1960 episode. His secret was “We all won Pulitzer Prizes this week.”

Los Angeles Times

Nelson joined the Los Angeles Times in 1965. He played an important role in uncovering the truth about the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, where South Carolina Highway Patrol officers shot and killed African-American students protesting racial segregation in South Carolina. Nelson obtained the victims' medical records, which showed the police had shot some of the black students in the back of the head.

In 1970 he wrote a story about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police in Meridian, Mississippi, shot two Ku Klux Klan members in a sting bankrolled by the local Jewish community.

Works Jack Nelson, Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2013)

Death Jack Nelson died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland on October 21, 2009, ten days after his 80th birthday.