WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

'William Allen White' (Born February 10, 1868 in Emporia, Kansas - died January 31, 1944) was a renowned American newspaper editor.
He attended the University of Kansas and worked at the Kansas City Star.
White purchased his hometown newspaper, ''The Emporia Gazette'' for $3,000 ^[1] in 1895. He rocketed to national fame and influence in the Republican party with an August 16, 1896 editorial^[2] entitled "What's the Matter With Kansas?"
White developed a friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt with Roosevelt spending nights at White's Wight and Wight-designed home Red Rocks during trips across the United States (the house is now a museum and is on the National Register of Historic Places). White was to say later:
:Roosevelt bit me and I went mad.^[3]
White married Sallie Lindsay in 1893. They had two children, William Lindsay, born in 1900, and a daughter Mary, born in 1904. Mary died in a 1921 horse-riding accident leading White to write a famous eulogy "''Mary White''" on August 17, 1921.^[4]
He won a 1923 Pulitzer Prize for his editorial "To an Anxious Friend," published July 27, 1922 after being arrested in a dispute over free speech following objections to the new Kansas Industrial Court law pushed by rival publisher and then Governor Henry Justin Allen.
Objecting to the rise of the Klu Klux Klan in the state, he made an unsuccessful run for Kansas Governor in 1924. White was an early supporter of the Progressive Party spearheaded by Robert M. La Follette, Sr..
His autobiography, which was published posthumously, won a 1947 Pulitzer Prize.
Life Magazine described him:
:He is the small-town boy who made good at home. To the small-town man who envies the glamour of the city, he is living assurance that small-town life may be preferable. To the city man who looks back with nostalgia on a small-town youth, he is a living symbol of small-town simplicity and kindliness and common sense.^[1]
The University of Kansas Journalism School is named for him.
In the 1980s, alternative rock group They Might Be Giants used large cardboard cutouts of White's face during many concerts, as well as in the video for "Don't Let's Start". His image also appears on the CD single.^[6]

Contents

Quotations

Notes

External links

Quotations

From editorial ''Mary White'':
From 1933 editorial about the futility of war (referring to World War I):

Notes

1. http://www.kspress.com/img/HOF/members/white-wa.html
2. http://www.emporia.com/waw/kansas.html
3. http://www.emporia.com/waw/williamawhite.html
4. http://www.emporia.com/waw/mary.html
5. http://www.kspress.com/img/HOF/members/white-wa.html
6. http://tmbw.net/wiki/TMBG.ORG_FAQ

External links

★ Emporia Gazette & Museum

★ William Allen White

★ Profile from Kansas State Historical Society

★ "What's the Matter with Kansas" essay

★

★ Historic Home "Red Rocks" of William Allen White