In Conversation: On The Life of Journalist Bill Baggs

David Lawrence Jr. retired in 1999 as publisher of The Miami Herald to work in the area of early childhood development and readiness. He chairs The Children’s Movement of Florida, aimed at making children the state’s top priority for investment and decision-making. He has led successful campaigns for The Children’s Trust, a dedicated source of early intervention and prevention funding for children in Miami-Dade. He has chaired the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Child Protection, and a similar panel for the Secretary of the Department of Children and Families. In 2002, he was a key figure in passing a statewide constitutional amendment to provide pre-K for all 4-year-olds. The David Lawrence Jr. K-8 Public School opened in 2006. His memoir, “A Dedicated Life: Journalism, Justice and a Chance for Every Child,” was published in 2018.

Amy Paige Condon is the founder of the Refinery Writing Studio and the associate editor of Beacon, a quarterly news magazine published by the Savannah Morning News. She is the coauthor of Wiley’s Championship BBQ Cookbook and The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook. Bill Baggs, the white, late editor of the late Miami News, a prominent southern newspaper, championed unpopular ideas in his front-page columns, such as protecting the environment, desegregating public schools, and peace in Vietnam. Under his leadership, the Miami News earned three Pulitzer Prizes. For his efforts, Baggs earned a bullet hole through his office window, police officers outside his home, and a used Mercedes outfitted with a remote starter, just in case. He died of pneumonia in 1969 at the age of forty-five. In A Nervous Man (University of Georgia Press) Condon tells the story of an orphaned boy from rural Colquitt, Georgia, who bore witness and impacted some of the twentieth century’s most earth-shifting events: World War II, the civil rights movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. Moreover, he used his daily column as a bully pulpit for social justice and wielded his pen like a scalpel to reveal the truth.