H. Bailey Thompson

Bailey Thomson planted a bundle of loblolly pines around his family's farm in Pickens County the year he was ten.    His 4-H teacher had donated them with careful instructions.  True to his nature, Thomson, deliberately placed each seedling into a hole as directed, and covered the roots with a bit of red earth.  Such care and dedication was his North Star as he earned three degrees from the University of Alabama and became a journalist, a scholar, a teacher, and a loyal friend to all who labored in the vineyards of truth and honor with him.  

Thomson began work as a journalist for The Huntsville Times and The Tuscaloosa News. Later, he was editorial page editor of The Shreveport, La., Journal, and chief editorial writer for the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. He returned to Alabama in 1992 to become associate editor of the Mobile Register, where in 1995 he and two colleagues were finalists for a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1999, an editorial series Thomson wrote for the Register about Alabama, titled "Dixie's Broken Heart," won the Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Two years later he was a finalist for the same award and also for a Pulitzer.  In 2002, he was both editor and an author of Century of Controversy, a book about Alabama's antiquated constitution.  And though Thomson did not hesitate to speak out about controversial issues, his voice seemed guided by predecessor Clarence Cason's notion that what we need is a quiet revolution, a revision of our fixed ideas, a redirection of our courage and audacity.  With a quiet but fixed and courageous voice, Thomson took on the issue of Constitutional Reform, joining in the establishment of Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform, an organization he later chaired, and then taking its message to the people of Alabama town meeting by town meeting, Alabamian to Alabamian. 

No faculty member more fully embraced the college's mission of advancing the democratic arts than Bailey Thomson.  It was his life’s calling.  The dean of his college, who often accompanied Thomson on his grassroots errands, logging an untold number of country miles, jokingly redefined his job as “Driving Mr. Bailey.”

Among Bailey's numerous gifts to his colleagues and the University was the creation of the Clarence Cason Non-Fiction Writing Award, which is now recognized among the nation's finest prizes.  Previous recipients have included Gay Talese, E.O. Wilson, Howell Raines, Albert Murray, Wayne Flynt, Diane McWhorter, Rick Bragg, and Bailey himself.

Bailey Thomson’s untimely death in 2003 cut short a brilliant career, but the seedlings he planted continue to bear fruit.  The College of Communication and Information Sciences, Bailey Thomson’s college, is proud to honor one of its own with induction into its Communication Hall of Fame.