Marguerite Higgins

Marguerite Higgins Hall (September 3, 1920 – January 3, 1966) was an American reporter and war correspondent. Higgins covered World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and in the process advanced the cause of equal access for female war correspondents. She had a long career with the New York Herald Tribune (1942–1963) and as a syndicated columnist for Newsday (1963–1965). She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence awarded in 1951 for her coverage of the Korean War. She subsequently won Long Island University's George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting for articles from behind enemy lines in Korea and other nations in 1952.

Early life and education Higgins was born on September 3, 1920, in British Hong Kong, where her father, Lawrence Higgins, was working at a shipping company. Her father, an Irish-American, met his future wife and Higgins's mother, Marguerite de Godard Higgins (who was of French aristocratic descent) in WWI Paris. Shortly afterward, they moved to Hong Kong, where their daughter was born.

The family moved back to the United States three years later and settled in Oakland. Higgins's father lost his job during the 1929 stock market crash, which promoted anxiety for the family. In her autobiography, News Is a Singular Thing, Higgins wrote that it was the worst day of her childhood:

It was on that day that I began worrying about how I'd earn a living when I grew up. I was then eight years old. Like millions of others brought up in the thirties, I was haunted by the fear that there might be no place for me in our society.

Regardless, the family managed. Higgins's father eventually got a job at a bank and her mother was able to get Higgins a scholarship to the Anna Head School in Berkeley, in exchange for taking a position as a French teacher.

Korea In 1950, Higgins was named chief of the Tribunes Tokyo bureau, and she received a cold welcome by her colleagues in Tokyo. She later learned that a recently published novel by her colleague in Berlin had created a hostile impression. The novel, Shriek With Pleasure, depicted a female reporter in Berlin who stole stories and slept with sources. The gossip at the time speculated that the novelist, Toni Howard, based the main character on Higgins, raising suspicion and hostility among Tokyo staffers. This was a major breakthrough for all female war correspondents. Her initial banishment from Korea and MacArthur's subsequent reversal allowing Higgins to remain at the front made headlines in the United States and made her into a bit of a celebrity. They shared the honor with four other male war correspondents.

Covering world affairs As a result of her reporting from Korea, Higgins received the 1950 George Polk Memorial Award from the Overseas Press Club. She contributed along with other major journalistic and political figures to the Collier's magazine collaborative special issue Preview of the War We Do Not Want, with an article entitled "Women of Russia".

Higgins continued to cover foreign affairs throughout the rest of her life, interviewing world leaders such as Francisco Franco, Nikita Khrushchev and Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1955, she established and became chief of the Tribunes Moscow bureau and was the first American correspondent allowed back into the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. While in South Vietnam, another feud developed between Higgins and David Halberstam, a New York Times correspondent who was assigned to replace Bigart.

At the time, journalism was a male-dominated industry with double standards. Men's sexual behaviors and habits were deemed irrelevant to their work, nor were they criticized for sleeping around to get information or stories. Their first daughter, born in 1953, died five days after a premature birth. In 1958, she gave birth to a son, named Lawrence Higgins Hall and in 1959, a daughter, Linda Marguerite Hall. She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband.

In popular culture Higgins was played by Megan Fox in the South Korean film The Battle of Jangsari.

In Phil Pisani's book Maggie's Wars, the main character is based on Marguerite Higgins.

In Nathan Hale's graphic novel Cold War Correspondent, a fictionalized version of Marguerite Higgins appears as the narrator.

Honors Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson honored war correspondents, including Higgins, at an event in Washington, on November 23, 1946.

On September 2, 2010, South Korea posthumously awarded Order of Diplomatic Service Merit Heungin Medal , one of its highest honors, to Marguerite Higgins. In a ceremony in the capital, her daughter and grandson accepted the Heunginjang, a national medal. The award cites Higgins's bravery in publicizing South Korea's struggle for survival in the early 1950s.

In 2016, South Korean Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs awarded Korean War's Heroine of May.

Books

Cold War Correspondent: A Korean War Tale, 2021 (Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales #11)