Longtime Atlanta journalist Bill Shipp as editor of the University of Georgia student newspaper in 1953 (l) and at his home office in Ackworth, Georgia in 2016 (r).

Longtime Atlanta journalist Bill Shipp as editor of the University of Georgia student newspaper in 1953 (l) and at his home office in Ackworth, Georgia in 2016 (r). / On Second Thought

Fifty-five years ago, the University of Georgia accepted its first African-American students. It was the kind of progress Bill Shipp had demonstrated for years earlier. Shipp was a young student editor for the campus newspaper who resigned the position after a black student was denied entry to UGA's law school.  Shipp went on to cover some of the biggest stories of the civil rights era, from the integration of Ole Miss to the murder of a Georgia Army reservist by Ku Klux Klan days after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Georgia Writer's Hall of Fame inducted Bill Shipp earlier this month. We talk with him about his storied career. 

Tags: Georgia Writer's Hall of Fame  Bill Shipp  journalism  Atlanta  Georgia