Bill Baggs

William Calhoun "Bill" Baggs (b. 1921-1969) was an American journalist and editor of The Miami News (1957 to 1969). He was one of a small group of Southern newspaper editors who campaigned for civil rights for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Baggs became an early opponent of the Vietnam War.

Early life and education

William Calhoun Baggs, called "Bill", was born and grew up in Miami, Florida. He went to local schools, which were still racially segregated at the time. He got interested in journalism and newspapers in high school.

Marriage and family

Bill Baggs' first wife Gee Langstrong (m. 1941-1947) was Miami Harold Editor and married Baggs when she was twenty and left him six years later. After pre-school teacher Dora Wentulay became his ex-fiancé when she died of breast cancer on the day of their wedding in 1949, he married Oxford neurologist Balla Cox two years later and had a son named Jim. They ended up divorcing sometime in 1962.

Career

Baggs started work in journalism as a reporter. Although it was unknown at the time, Baggs was one of the journalists involved in the CIA's Operation Mockingbird, an effort to influence American media, which was organized by Cord Meyer. Together with previous attacks on the State Department and other government agencies, in the late 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy began to target the CIA, which he claimed harbored more than 100 closeted Communists. Baggs joined philosophically with both Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner of the CIA at Operation Mockingbird in supporting and defending Cord Meyer, who had organized much of the programs. American mainstream journalists attacked McCarthy.

Selected as editor of The Miami News in 1957, Baggs held that position until his death at age 48 in 1969. He became involved in some of the biggest social issues of the era.

As African Americans increased their activism in the civil rights movement, Baggs was among a small group of white Southern editors who supported them and covered events in the South. Others in this group included Ralph McGill at The Atlanta Constitution, Hodding Carter at the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times, and Harry Ashmore at the Arkansas Gazette.

An active anti-Communist, Baggs published numerous anti-Castro editorials and articles during the early days of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, beginning in 1959. Baggs cultivated numerous news sources from within the anti-Castro Soldier-of-Fortune community in South Florida, including Gerry Patrick Hemming, Roy Hargraves, Eddie Collins and William Whatley, as well as Alex Rorke and several others. He also worked with Frank Sturgis and Bernard Barker to develop news leads and sources about the South Florida anti-Castro exile community long before they were involved with the 1970s Watergate scandal.

Baggs regularly talked with South Florida CIA case officers, such as David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, on various topics related to the intrigues among South Florida anti-Castro Cuban exiles. One of his reporters, Hal Hendrix, known as "the spook" at The Miami News, broke the story about the alleged coup d'état against Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic, the day before it happened. This was embarrassing for the CIA and Miami News, but also for Hendrix.

In the 1960s, Baggs became increasingly opposed to the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1967 and 1968 he traveled to North Vietnam with Harry Ashmore, editor of the Arkansas Gazette, on a private peace mission. While there, they interviewed the North Vietnamese premier, Ho Chi Minh, about what he needed to end the war.

Baggs was a longtime supporter of liberal Democrats such as Rep. Claude Pepper and Senator Dante Fascell. He wrote numerous articles and editorials supporting legislation to help the numerous retirees who were already dominating the population in South Florida. They represented the core readership base of the Miami News. He was often criticized for his support of civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, and promotion of social welfare programs for the elderly, the infirm and the disadvantaged in South Florida and throughout the nation.

Baggs supported early pioneering conservation efforts to rescue the southeast section of Key Biscayne from overdevelopment by real estate developers. The Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park was named in his honor on land protected from development.

In 2004 a large sign was installed at the park, recognizing the site as part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom: eyewitness accounts documented hundreds of slaves and Black Seminoles escaping from here to go to freedom in the Bahamas in the early 1820s; 300 were recorded in 1823. Construction of a manned lighthouse at Cape Florida in 1825 cut off this escape route.

Bill Baggs died of a heart attack in 1969 at the age of 48. He had often been the first employee to arrive every morning before 5:30 A.M. and the last one to leave at night after 6:00 P.M. after the paper had been published and distributed to be available for rush-hour traffic. Starting at 4:00 P.M., newsboys hawked the paper at traffic lights throughout South Florida. Bill Baggs had greatly admired President John F. Kennedy and was noticeably saddened after his assassination in 1963. The editor's close associates said that he was never the same after the death of his longtime friend and political hero.

See also

• Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park

Bibliography

• Teel, Leonard Ray. 2003. "Mott winner recounts research", Kappa Tau Alpha Newsletter, Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2003
• 1958 Profile of Bill Baggs, Time magazine