Chautauqua Lecture Series: The Past in Never Dead: Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases and Why They Matter

On October 29, 1911, newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer died aboard his yacht in the Charleston, S.C., harbor. His destination had been his winter cottage on Jekyll Island. Several years later, through an endowment in his will, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded to recognize excellence in journalism and the arts.

This summer, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Prize, the Society will explore connections between our state and the coveted award. In a series of five programs, scholars and authors will focus on winners in different categories and the impact of the Prize. The series will begin and end with lectures about early recipients: playwright Eugene O’Neill, winner of four Prizes for drama, who lived on Sea Island for four years; and Caroline Miller, 1934 winner for fiction, who paved the way for Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. The 1998 and 2007 Pulitzer Prize winners in History, both Georgia residents, will discuss the impact of the award on their careers, and Joseph Pulitzer’s biographer will tell the story of the ground-breaking publisher.

On August 18, Pulitzer Prize winner Hank Klibanoff will present “The Past in Never Dead: Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases and Why They Matter.” While serving as managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Klibanoff won the 2007 Prize in History for The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, a book he co-authored with Gene Roberts. Currently, he is the James M. Cox, Jr., Professor of Journalism at Emory University and oversees the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, which investigates unsolved racial murders committed during the civil rights era.

The 2016 Lecture Series is sponsored by Wells Fargo Advisors.