The American journalist Harry Scott Ashmore (1916-1998) was the 1958 Pulitzer Prize winner for his reports and commentary on the Little Rock, Arkansas, school integration crisis.

Harry Ashmore was born July 28, 1916, in Greenville, South Carolina, in the northwest part of the state. His father, William Green Ashmore, was a merchant, and the Ashmore traced their lineage in Greenville County to the colonial period of American history. Harry's mother, Elizabeth Scott Ashmore, came from Scotch-Irish roots that began in America with her father's migration from County Antrim, Ireland. The Scotts were strong Presbyterians, but Elizabeth relented to the Baptist loyalties of the Ashmores.

Harry recalled in his boyhood a region marked by numerous textile mills that made it emblematic of the "New South" and its industrial character. Nonetheless, the people of the area were highly partisan in their Old South prejudices. Ashmore remembered that his relatives considered white supremacy a...