Thomas Lunsford Stokes, Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

Thomas Lunsford Stokes

journalist

Date of Birth: 01-Nov-1898

Date of Death: 14-May-1958

Profession: journalist, autobiographer

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio


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About Thomas Lunsford Stokes

  • Thomas Lunsford Stokes, Jr.
  • (November 1, 1898 – May 14, 1958) was a Pulitzer-prize winning American journalist. Thomas Stokes was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 1, 1898, to Thomas Stokes and Emma Layton, both descendants of colonial families.
  • He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1920, after 3 years. He began his journalism career working as a reporter for Georgia newspapers and then moved to Washington in 1921, where he took dictation from reporters at United Press.
  • He later worked as a copy editor and then as a reporter covering all aspects of Washington politics.
  • He greeted the New Deal with enthusiasm and his coverage of the early days of Franklin D.
  • Roosevelt's administration brought him to the attention of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, which hired him as its Washington correspondent in 1933. In 1937, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America reprinted a series of his articles under the title Carpetbaggers of Industry to indict businesses that relocated to the South in search of lower-earning workers.His coverage of FDR's administration grew more critical over time.
  • He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for investigating how Kentucky politicians had corrupted the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to advance their own careers.
  • He concluded the Kentucky WPA was "a grand political racket in which the taxpayer is the victim." Stokes and WPA Administrator Harry Hopkins traded charges for several days.
  • Stokes explained why the WPA's investigation found fewer problems that he had: The motives were different.
  • I was sent to Kentucky as a reporter.
  • I had no other instructions than to write the facts as I found them.
  • I had no axe to grind.
  • I lay no claims to infallibility.
  • I yield myself to the usual margin of error.
  • I made a careful investigation, in good faith, and I stand on my conclusions....Mr.
  • Hopkins...sent WPA investigators to the State to investigate the WPA.
  • WPA officials and workers, when confronted by WPA investigators, naturally see over the shoulders of the latter none other than Mr.
  • Hopkins in Washington, the man who controls their jobs.
  • It is only human for them to say "It isn't so." To this may be attributed, at least in part, the conflict in versions of what happened in individual cases.
  • But to my mind-and I think to any fair-minded person, there can be no question about the broad, general picture.
  • The whole atmosphere and tone of the WPA in Kentucky is political and has been at least since early March. The Kentucky politician implicated was Senator Alben Barkley.
  • The affair led indirectly to the passage of the Hatch Act.He authored an autobiography, Chip Off My Shoulder, in 1940.
  • A reviewer described him: "He is irreverent but not flip, ironic but not bitter, a hater of pretense and arrogance but not of people.Some of his 1941 reporting on the awarding of construction contracts provoked a contentious debate in the U.S.
  • Senate in which Senator Claude Pepper accused Stokes of "perfidious falsehood."Stokes became a columnist for United Features Syndicate in December 1944.
  • More than 100 newspapers ran his column. In 1947, he won the Raymond Clapper Award for general excellence in Washington reporting and crusading.
  • He was honored again by the Raymond Clapper Memorial Association just before his death.His second book, The Savannah, a study of the river's role in the South, appeared in 1951.He died of a brain tumor in Washington, D.C., on May 14, 1958.
  • He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
  • His wife Hannah survived him. The Thomas L.
  • Stokes Award is given annually for reporting on the development, use and conservation of energy and other natural resources.

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