William Bradford Huie

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William Bradford "Bill" Huie (November 13, 1910 – November 22, 1986) was an American journalist, editor, publisher and author.

Born in Hartselle, Alabama, Huie graduated from the University of Alabama in 1930 after which he went to work for a Birmingham newspaper. In 1935, his wedding to Ruth Puckett took place in her parent's house in Hartselle. Huie later immortalized the scene in his 1940 novel "Mud on the Stars" which Hollywood later portrayed in the movie "Wild River." He served as an officer with the United States Navy's Seabees during World War II, after which he returned to journalism while writing novels and nonfiction works that dealt primarily with the war.

Huie also became editor of The American Mercury, the magazine co-founded by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, in 1950, the year publisher Clendenin J. Ryan bought the magazine. Huie and Ryan sought to graduate the magazine into a journal of the fledgling American conservative intellectual movement, opening its pages to more mainstream writing as well as its usual highbrow content. (Future National Review founder-editor William F. Buckley, Jr. was one of Huie's staffers.) Huie and Ryan were unable to overcome financial difficulties and were forced to sell the magazine to one of its investors, Russell Maguire, by the mid-1950s. Maguire and subsequent owners drove the magazine, in author William A. Rusher's phrase, "toward the fever swamps of anti-Semitism," while Buckley's creation, beginning in 1955, became exactly the kind of magazine Huie and Ryan hoped the Mercury would become, a home for the disparate strands of post-World War II American conservatism.

Book jacket, William Bradford Huie, "The Americanization of Emily" (1959)
Book jacket, William Bradford Huie, "The Americanization of Emily" (1959)

After leaving the Mercury, Huie turned his attention to the civil rights movement in books examining the death of Emmett Till and an investigation of Klan activities in Alabama. His articles about the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner were combined to form a 1964 book titled Three Lives for Mississippi.

In 1953, he covered the appeal of an earlier death sentence of Ruby McCollum, a black woman who murdered her white physician and senator-elect lover, Dr. C. Leroy Adams, in the small town of Live Oak, Florida. Huie's book, Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail, was banned in Florida, and Huie was cited for contempt of court by the Judge in the case for "meddling" in a trial that "could embarrass the community." Huie's coverage of the death sentence appeal resulted in articles in The Pittsburgh Courier, Ebony Magazine, Time, and other periodicals worldwide. Huie's work incorporates the earlier coverage of the trial by Zora Neale Hurston, who published a series of related articles in The Pittsburgh Courier. A more recent treatment of the case, including the full transcript of the original murder trial, can be found in The Trial of Ruby McCollum, by C. Arthur Ellis, Jr., Ph.D.

When he published The Klansman in 1967, Huie received death threats and a cross burning occurred on the front lawn of his home. Mainstream journalists criticized Huie for employing "checkbook journalism." He did not apologize for that, saying he gathered information in civil rights investigations the same way the FBI did--he paid informants. In He Slew the Dreamer, Huie concluded that James Earl Ray was responsible for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and that he acted alone.

Five of his works were made into motion pictures, plus he wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed 1961 film drama The Outsider, directed by Delbert Mann and starring Tony Curtis as Native-American World War II hero Ira Hayes. His book The Execution of Private Slovik, an account on the only WWII G-I executed for desertion, was made into a TV movie starring Martin Sheen.

William Bradford Huie died in 1986 in Guntersville, Alabama.

In November, 2006, the City of Hartselle, Alabama renamed the local public library in honor of Huie. The William Bradford Huie Library of Hartselle has a permanent biographical display of Huie's work.

The Revolt of Mamie Stover, U.S. paperback edition
The Revolt of Mamie Stover, U.S. paperback edition

Contents

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Nonfiction

  • The Fight for Air Power (1942)
  • Seabee Roads to Victory (1944)
  • Can Do!: The Story of the Seabees (1944)
  • From Omaha to Okinawa: The Story of the Seabees (1945)
  • The Case against the Admirals: Why We Must Have a Unified Command (1946)
  • The Execution of Private Slovik (1954) - (1974 film)
  • The Hiroshima Pilot: The Case of Major Claude Eatherly (1964)
  • Three Lives for Mississippi (1965)
  • He Slew the Dreamer: My Search with James Earl Ray for the Truth about the Murder of Martin Luther King (1970)
  • A New Life To Live: Jimmy Putnam's Story (editor 1977)
  • It's Me O Lord! (1979)
  • The Ray of Hope (1984)
  • To Live and Die in Dixie (1985)

[edit] External links

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