The recent shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County put me in mind of Ralph McGill. More specifically, it was The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial response to the shooting that put me in mind of McGill.
McGill, of course, was the legendary Atlanta Constitution editor whose front-page columns served more than a half century ago as the region’s moral voice on the critical issues of that era, especially civil rights and race. School shootings were not a problem back then.
I take no pleasure in criticizing my old employer. The Atlanta Journal gave me my first job out of college in 1973. McGill had died in 1969, but he and his columns still cast a long shadow over the politics and the issues—and the journalism—of the day. His columns ran daily in the left-hand column of the Constitution’s front page, which was otherwise devoted to hard news. But Column One, as it was called back then, was McGill’s pulpit.
Actually, the first time the AJC’s editorial commentary on a shooting issue made me think of McGill was on May 3, 2023. That was the day after the mid-day shooting at a Midtown Atlanta medical office building that left one person dead and three others wounded. The AJC devoted its entire front page to a powerful editorial that ran under the byline of Andrew Morse, the paper’s president and publisher. “We don’t have to live in fear of visiting the doctor, or taking a trip to the supermarket, or sending our children to school,” Morse wrote. “We don’t have to duck and cover. Our children don’t have to participate in lockdown drills…”
Morse was wrong, of course. We’ve had to do all those things, and still do. But he took a good first stab at putting a bright spotlight on the issue—and holding Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly accountable for state laws that allowed the midtown shooting.
Good, I thought. Maybe they’re summoning their inner McGill. If they keep it up, if they subject Kemp and others to daily opprobrium, if they make it clear that the blood of Midtown is on the hands of Kemp and his General Assembly allies, maybe it will do some good. But they didn’t. Nearly as I can determine, Morse’s editorial was a one-and-done.
Until the Sept. 4 shooting at Apalachee High. This time a 1,123-word editorial ran on page A18 of the Sunday paper. Like the editorial from May 2023, it was powerfully argued, and called out Kemp and others for their hypocrisy and empty platitudes. But it, too, seems to have been a one-and-done.
Perhaps McGill’s most famous column was the one published on Oct. 13, 1958, a Monday. The previous day, McGill had been out of town and had arrived back in Atlanta that afternoon to learn that The Temple, the city’s largest synagogue, had been bombed by antisemitic terrorists. With a deadline looming, McGill took 28 minutes to knock out a column that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize. Much of what he wrote then echoes today across Midtown and Barrow County.
“Let us face the facts,” McGill wrote. “This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown.”
The “things sown” in Barrow County and Midtown include votes that put in office a ruling class in thrall to the nation’s gun lobby and bound to a vision of the Second Amendment that emphasizes not the “well regulated Militia” James Madison had in mind, but the right of individuals to own weapons of mass destruction.
Thus do we find ourselves in a situation where a 14-year-old is given an AR-15-style rifle for Christmas by his father and then, allegedly, walks into Apalachee High School, kills two students and two teachers and wounds nine other students.
A somber Kemp—a proud Second Amendment adherent who last year signed a law allowing concealed carry of weapons anywhere in the state (well, except the State Capitol) without a license or background check—rushed to the scene of the crime to offer his “thoughts and prayers” and to praise first responders and law enforcement investigating the crime. A reporter shouted a question asking Kemp if there was anything more his office could have done to prevent such shootings. Kemp deftly side-stepped the question with a well-worn talking point. “Look,” he said, “we’ve done a tremendous amount on school safety but today is not the day for politics or policy. Today is the day for an investigation, to mourn these precious Georgians that we have lost …”
State Sen. Frank Ginn, a Republican whose district includes Barrow County and part of Clarke, put his finger, perhaps unintentionally, on the policy choice faced by legislators. “The delicate dance we have to do is make sure we’re not infringing on Second Amendment rights,” he told the AJC. Never mind that at least two Apalachee High students and two teachers will never dance again, delicately or otherwise. At least the Second Amendment is safe.
I realize that the nature of the media and the power of the press has changed a great deal since McGill’s day, but the AJC is still uniquely positioned to hold Kemp, Ginn and their fellow Second Amendment advocates to account for deaths and injuries that might not have happened but for the laws they enacted. It’s time for the AJC to rouse McGill’s ghost, reopen Column One, and subject Kemp and company to a daily dose of the First Amendment. One-and-done won’t get the job done.
Charlie is the scholar in residence at the Center for Middle Georgia Studies at Middle Georgia State University. Based in Decatur, the former political journalist and public relations professional now studies major economic, political and health issues affecting rural Georgia. He shares his research through statewide speaking engagements, regular columns appearing in publications across the Georgia Trust for Local News and his blog, Trouble in God’s Country.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, the Republican-controlled Georgia General Assembly passed a 98-page monster of a bill called the “Election Integrity Act of 2021.” The bill...
The Georgia Senate has established a new committee to study artificial intelligence, aka AI. The jokes, of course, pretty much write themselves. As a longtime follower of the Georgia...
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the poverty-stricken American South the biggest threat to the nation’s economy. “It is my conviction that the South presents right now the...
The trip from Watkinsville to Alamo, GA covers a little over 140 miles and, according to Google Maps, should take about two hours and 40 minutes. It’s pretty much...
After Apalachee Shooting, Newspapers Should Be Crusading for Gun Reform
The recent shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County put me in mind of Ralph McGill. More specifically, it was The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial response to the shooting that put me in mind of McGill.
McGill, of course, was the legendary Atlanta Constitution editor whose front-page columns served more than a half century ago as the region’s moral voice on the critical issues of that era, especially civil rights and race. School shootings were not a problem back then.
I take no pleasure in criticizing my old employer. The Atlanta Journal gave me my first job out of college in 1973. McGill had died in 1969, but he and his columns still cast a long shadow over the politics and the issues—and the journalism—of the day. His columns ran daily in the left-hand column of the Constitution’s front page, which was otherwise devoted to hard news. But Column One, as it was called back then, was McGill’s pulpit.
Actually, the first time the AJC’s editorial commentary on a shooting issue made me think of McGill was on May 3, 2023. That was the day after the mid-day shooting at a Midtown Atlanta medical office building that left one person dead and three others wounded. The AJC devoted its entire front page to a powerful editorial that ran under the byline of Andrew Morse, the paper’s president and publisher. “We don’t have to live in fear of visiting the doctor, or taking a trip to the supermarket, or sending our children to school,” Morse wrote. “We don’t have to duck and cover. Our children don’t have to participate in lockdown drills…”
Morse was wrong, of course. We’ve had to do all those things, and still do. But he took a good first stab at putting a bright spotlight on the issue—and holding Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly accountable for state laws that allowed the midtown shooting.
Good, I thought. Maybe they’re summoning their inner McGill. If they keep it up, if they subject Kemp and others to daily opprobrium, if they make it clear that the blood of Midtown is on the hands of Kemp and his General Assembly allies, maybe it will do some good. But they didn’t. Nearly as I can determine, Morse’s editorial was a one-and-done.
Until the Sept. 4 shooting at Apalachee High. This time a 1,123-word editorial ran on page A18 of the Sunday paper. Like the editorial from May 2023, it was powerfully argued, and called out Kemp and others for their hypocrisy and empty platitudes. But it, too, seems to have been a one-and-done.
Perhaps McGill’s most famous column was the one published on Oct. 13, 1958, a Monday. The previous day, McGill had been out of town and had arrived back in Atlanta that afternoon to learn that The Temple, the city’s largest synagogue, had been bombed by antisemitic terrorists. With a deadline looming, McGill took 28 minutes to knock out a column that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize. Much of what he wrote then echoes today across Midtown and Barrow County.
“Let us face the facts,” McGill wrote. “This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown.”
The “things sown” in Barrow County and Midtown include votes that put in office a ruling class in thrall to the nation’s gun lobby and bound to a vision of the Second Amendment that emphasizes not the “well regulated Militia” James Madison had in mind, but the right of individuals to own weapons of mass destruction.
Thus do we find ourselves in a situation where a 14-year-old is given an AR-15-style rifle for Christmas by his father and then, allegedly, walks into Apalachee High School, kills two students and two teachers and wounds nine other students.
A somber Kemp—a proud Second Amendment adherent who last year signed a law allowing concealed carry of weapons anywhere in the state (well, except the State Capitol) without a license or background check—rushed to the scene of the crime to offer his “thoughts and prayers” and to praise first responders and law enforcement investigating the crime. A reporter shouted a question asking Kemp if there was anything more his office could have done to prevent such shootings. Kemp deftly side-stepped the question with a well-worn talking point. “Look,” he said, “we’ve done a tremendous amount on school safety but today is not the day for politics or policy. Today is the day for an investigation, to mourn these precious Georgians that we have lost …”
State Sen. Frank Ginn, a Republican whose district includes Barrow County and part of Clarke, put his finger, perhaps unintentionally, on the policy choice faced by legislators. “The delicate dance we have to do is make sure we’re not infringing on Second Amendment rights,” he told the AJC. Never mind that at least two Apalachee High students and two teachers will never dance again, delicately or otherwise. At least the Second Amendment is safe.
I realize that the nature of the media and the power of the press has changed a great deal since McGill’s day, but the AJC is still uniquely positioned to hold Kemp, Ginn and their fellow Second Amendment advocates to account for deaths and injuries that might not have happened but for the laws they enacted. It’s time for the AJC to rouse McGill’s ghost, reopen Column One, and subject Kemp and company to a daily dose of the First Amendment. One-and-done won’t get the job done.
Charlie is the scholar in residence at the Center for Middle Georgia Studies at Middle Georgia State University. Based in Decatur, the former political journalist and public relations professional now studies major economic, political and health issues affecting rural Georgia. He shares his research through statewide speaking engagements, regular columns appearing in publications across the Georgia Trust for Local News and his blog, Trouble in God’s Country.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
Ice Ice Baby
ACC Commission May Reject Proposal for Affordable Housing