Hazel Brannon Smith

Who was Hazel Brannon Smith?

Hazel Freeman Brannon Smith, the owner and editor of four weekly newspapers in rural Mississippi, was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing.

A lifelong Baptist, she described herself as "just a little editor in a little spot. A lot of other little editors in a lot of little spots is what helps make this country. It's either going to help protect that freedom that we have, or else it's going to let that freedom slip away by default."

In 1930, she graduated from high school in Gadsden, Alabama, at the age of 16. Graduating from the University of Alabama in 1935 with a B.A. in Journalism, she went to Durant, Mississippi and bought the failing Durant News, making it such a success by 1943 that she purchased the Lexington Advertiser in the neighboring town of Lexington, Mississippi. She edited and published the Lexington Advertiser from 1943 to 1983. In 1956, she acquired the Banner County Outlook in 1956 and the Northside Reporter in 1956.