John Herbers | Reporter, instructor, 93
John Herbers, 93, a reporter based in the South for a wire service and later the New York Times who wrote with urgency about church burnings and bombings during the civil rights struggle and later covered politics and urban affairs, died March 17 at a Washington retirement community. The cause was degenerative brain disease, said a daughter, Anne Rosen.
John Herbers, 93, a reporter based in the South for a wire service and later the New York Times who wrote with urgency about church burnings and bombings during the civil rights struggle and later covered politics and urban affairs, died March 17 at a Washington retirement community. The cause was degenerative brain disease, said a daughter, Anne Rosen.
Mr. Herbers began his career in 1949 in Greenwood, Miss., and within a few years was Mississippi bureau chief for the United Press wire service. He often reported on race relations.
He continued as a correspondent for what became the United Press International wire service until joining the Times in 1963. From his base at the paper's Atlanta bureau, he wrote about the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four black girls, the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964, and the 1965 voting-rights march in Selma, Ala.
Mr. Herbers served in the Army in the Pacific during World War II and graduated in 1949 from Emory. He was a Nieman fellow in the early 1960s.
After retiring from the Times, he was a visiting instructor at Princeton University and the University of Maryland. He wrote four books, including 1970's The Lost Priority: What Happened to the Civil Rights Movement in America?.
Mr. Herbers' wife of 64 years, Mary Elizabeth, died Feb. 5. Survivors include four daughters, a sister, six grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. - Washington Post