George Mitchell, as I say, succeeded Guy Johnson, and Harold Fleming
succeeded George Mitchell. Harold, as you probably know, was an Atlanta
boy fresh out of Harvard who had become interested in the race problem.
He went to see Ralph McGill, the Editor of the Atlanta
Constitution, for a job. He wanted to write, presumably on
social issues. McGill, who was on the Board of the Southern Regional
Council, or who at least had been one of the signers to get the charter,
told Harold, "We don't have money enough to employ a man for that
particular field, but there's a little organization around the corner
here, the Southern Regional Council, that's got a little paper, and it
seems to me that you'd be just the man for that job." So Harold applied
to George Mitchell, I guess, for the job and was given the job of editor
of this paper. He was an immediate success in that job. It was much more
than merely editing this paper; he established rapport with all
newspaper people, and particularly the representatives of the New York
Times. They had a southern correspondent based in
Atlanta, and Harold was always on friendly terms with people like James
Reston, Claude Sitton (who is now the Editor of the Raleigh
News and Observer), and so on. He knew the newspaper business,
so that he could prepare a release which they would use. Most releases
seem to be argumentative and protracted; Harold's were concise, to the
point,
Page 20 and thoroughly logical The newspapermen
appreciated it. Consequently, we always had a good outside press as well
as the Atlanta papers. The
Times and the Washington
Post were great allies of ours. That was Harold's
particular forte. He had gifts also as an organizer, but his forte was
to put into words which would be readable and acceptable by publishers
ideas that the Southern Regional Council wanted to get circulated. He
was an enormous success in that.