Who was Jonathan Daniels?
Jonathan Worth Daniels (1902-1981) is most often remembered as an aide and press secretary for President Franklin Roosevelt. He was the editor of the Raleigh, North Carolina, News and Observer from 1933 to 1941 and from 1948 through the mid-1960s. He wrote for a number of national magazines and authored more than 20 books, including the 1938 bestseller A Southerner Discovers the South.
A classic example of the conflicted white southern liberal of the mid-twentieth century, Daniels was a keen observer of the politics and culture of his day. He has provided historians a wealth of source material through his writings and in his papers in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Read his bio for the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.
Listen to an oral history interview conducted by historian Charles Eagles, author of Jonathan Daniels and Race Relations: The Evolution of a Southern Liberal (University of Tennessee Press, 1982).
Photo: Portrait by Underwood & Underwood Studios, in the Jonathan Daniels Papers #3466, Southern Historical Collection, Louis Round Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.