Buford Boone

Ever since I read your editorial, I have had an unspeakable admiration for you," read the letter. "The moral courage and profound dignity you have evinced in so many situations will long be remembered."

The year was 1957. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that letter and mailed it to a newspaper editor in a small southern col-lege town who was urging his readers to comply with a federal court order to integrate The University of Alabama.

Buford Boone, editor and publisher of The Tuscaloosa News, would win a Pulitzer Prize for his courageous editorials. A former FBI special agent, Boone had the utmost respect for the law of the land - and the nation's highest court declared that schools must be integrated. Boone spoke out forcefully and eloquently when a campus mob attacked Autherine Lucy and prevented her from becoming the first black student at Alabama.

"What does it mean today at The University of Alabama, and here in Tuscaloosa, to have the law on your side?," he wrote in a bold editorial. "The answer has to be: Nothing - that is, if the mob disagrees with you and the courts."

His editorial was widely reprinted in northern newspapers. There were telegrams from those who admired his convictions. But in Tuscaloosa he faced threats and canceled subscriptions, and a brick shattered a window of his home. Boone, however, would not be silenced. He relentlessly criticized a Klan leader whom he characterized as "a sickly looking, pitiable little man . . . a human jackal."

Buford Boone served The University of Alabama, this state, and the nation by displaying remarkable strength in a troubling time. Thanks in part to him, Alabama's schools were ultimately open to all of its citizens. It might have taken much longer had not been not been for this brave newspaper editor with strong convictions and the courage to state them.