Brave & Bankrupt

Nine years ago a man named Julian La Rose Harris went to Columbus, Ga. With him went his wife, Julia Collier Harris, and together they bought controlling shares of a newspaper, the Enquirer-Sun. All Columbians knew about the Harrises was that he was a son of Author Joel Chandler (Uncle Remus) Harris, that he was a newspaperman who was once managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution, more recently editor of the Paris Herald; that she was his wife. Columbians did not care to know much more, because the Enquirer-Sun was not much of a newspaper to bother about anyway.

Quietly, the slightly plump, round-faced Mr. Harris and the pretty, brown-haired Mrs. Harris went to work. He composed the editorials. She reviewed books, edited the women's pages, wrote articles. Before long Columbus citizens started to wonder what kind of persons these Harrises really were. Their newspaper was openly fighting the Ku Klux Klan. It was fighting intolerance. It was criticizing racial prejudices. These are the kind of editorials Columbians started to read:

"The whole Kukluxklan Kamelia Komedy is so foolish that one no longer wishes to protest against it because it is anti-Negro, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic, but rather because it makes the people of all the South appear idiotic when they continue to accept seriously Klonvocations and Klonciliums, and tolerate the fantastic ravings of men who are fattening on the money of deluded simpletons."

Then, when a whiteman forger and thief stole $140,000 of State money and was pardoned after serving four years of a five-year term Editor Harris wrote: "Mule Hicks, an ignorant 17-year-old Negro, stole a mule worth less than $100. He was sentenced to serve twenty years at hard labor. After serving twelve years he was still in the chain gang, and as a result of his treatment attempted to escape. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, although not a witness saw the killing. Mule Hicks is a Negro. Who cares?"

Far-flung recognition soon came to the Harrises. In 1926, the Enquirer-Sun received the Pulitzer Prize for journalism for "disinterested and meritorious public service," and Julian Harris was placed on the Pulitzer advisory award jury. And when, last year, the Enquirer-Sun celebrated its 100th anniversary, many a famed journalist sent praising messages to the Editors Harris.

But with the Harris fame came no fortune. The open Enquirer-Sun got few new subscribers, sometimes lost many old ones. One thousand subscriptions were cancelled after the initial Klan-basting. Fighting a fight where other Georgia papers feared to follow, the Enquirer-Sun never grew above 7,000 circulation, often went to many less. Mr. & Mrs. Harris stood alone.

Last week, because of defaulted interest payments on his Enquirer-Sun bonds. Robert Lee McKenney of the Macon (Ga.) News asked for a foreclosure. Receivers named were Mr. Harris and one George C. Woodruff. The Editors Harris were ordered to remain as editors, while a reorganization is effected. Simple was the explanation for the action as outlined by the Macon Telegraph next day: "The two Harrises . . . have made a real contribution to this state, because they have dared to think and say. . . . Their task was not simply to continue a going newspaper--it was to bring an almost moribund newspaper to a healthy state. Insufficient capital, economic conditions and enmity they had aroused in some of their fights have all handicapped them. In all their troubles the Harrises have not complained."