Arthur Stanley Dearman, the retired editor and publisher of The Neshoba Democrat, received the University of Mississippi's highest journalism award last week and was recognized in tributes as a legendary newspaperman who displayed raw courage over a career that spanned four decades.
Dearman received the prestigious Silver Em award, joining a distinguished club of noted journalists, among them William Turner Catledge, a former executive editor of The New York Times who grew up in Philadelphia and got his start at the Democrat in the 1930s.
Ole Miss Chancellor Robert C. Khayat presented the award to Dearman Thursday night in the Oxford-University Club downtown.
Upon hearing the news, the son of another longtime community newspaper editor in nearby Scott County praised Dearman for his work.
"Although I am very biased, I don't see too many 'Stan Dearmans and Erle Johnstons' in the newspaper business these days ... times are really different. You guys 'did it' the right way," said Bubby Johnston.
Erle Johnston is deceased.
The accolade is Dearman's second prestigious award since his retirement in 2000. In 2005, he was inducted into the Mississippi Press Association Hall of Fame.
Curtis Wilkie, chairman of the Silver Em Committee and the Kelly Gene Cook Professor of Journalism, said, "Stan Dearman was a guy that exemplified what community journalism means in Mississippi."
Although the award announcement cited Dearman's editorial writing that spurred the call for justice 40 years later in the 1964 civil rights murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, he editorialized relentlessly throughout his career for such noble causes as the public library and schools. He railed against a booming bootlegging trade in the 1970s that resulted in federal raids and exposed a corrupt county hospital administration that ended in an embezzlement conviction.
Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion- Ledger, a previous Silver Em recipient, nominated Dearman for the award and paid tribute to him at the dinner.
"Stanley Dearman is a legend in journalism, and he will never be forgotten in Mississippi history because Stanley Dearman never forgot," Mitchell said.
He also read a letter from David Goodman, Andrew Goodman's brother, congratulating Dearman on his Silver Em award.
"For the Goodman family, this has a very special and personal significance," Goodman said in the letter sent on behalf of his family. "You have been a beacon of light for us over a more than 40-year period. And, you have become one of our family's best friends."
Dearman called the award recognition a very humbling experience and a total surprise.
Mitchell said while Dearman is short, soft-spoken, white-haired, meek and a classical pianist, there's no mistaking the raw courage he has displayed since 1989 when he began to write editorials calling on his community to address the civil rights murders.
"He called on his community to prosecute the very killers who shared the sidewalks he did in downtown Philadelphia," Mitchell said.
"People in town told him to leave it alone. They told him to forget it, but the truth is, Stanley Dearman never forgot."
He remembered when hate boiled over the summer of 1964, Mitchell said, recalling how members of the community and the state's governor claimed the three civil rights workers' disappearance was nothing more than a hoax.
"He remembered when flies filled the air after a bulldozer dug up their bodies 44 days later," Mitchell said.
Dearman kept penning editorials about the unsolved case as the years passed and at one point, traveled to New York to interview Goodman's mother, Carolyn, and the two became friends.
Mitchell cited Dearman's work with the Philadelphia Coalition "which broke down racial barriers and in so doing, changed a community."
He recalled how tears rolled down Dearman's face in June 2005 when a jury found Edgar Ray Killen guilty of orchestrating the murders that had so long haunted him and his community.
"Tears flowed freely down his face. The more he wiped away, the more that others stained his cheeks," Mitchell said.
David Goodman cited Dearman's fearless conviction.
"You stood up to a lot of resistance to print the news even though it had economic consequences to your family's sole source of income and even through you putting yourself in physical harm's way. You are a brave man, amongst other special qualities, and a great patriot of our great society," Goodman said.
"As my mother loves to say, when you live long enough (in her case, 91 plus years) you see just about everything. And, she is glad to see that you are receiving this recognition for your extraordinary accomplishments."
In accepting the award, Dearman said he was grateful to Ole Miss, his alma mater, where he was taught the fundamentals of journalism, noting that even after all the years he had been gone he still felt a strong connection to the university.
"When I went to Neshoba County I didn't go with any particular agenda and I didn't know what I was getting into," he said.
"I found a community that was not accustomed to the practice of journalism as it ought to be. It was pretty lawless in a lot of areas, not just in the thing it's the most famous for but in its institutions."
Dearman said he just wanted to practice journalism as he was taught.
He praised Catledge who was not only his friend, but his mentor as well.
"A lot of great journalists have won this award and I really appreciate the fact that an obscure editor from an obscure community stands here today. I just want to say thank you, thank you very much," Dearman said.
On Friday, in a lecture to about 200 students, Dearman told them about the challenges, frustrations and opportunities the Democrat faced from 1966 to 2000 when he was editor.
Dearman delivered the Stuart J. Bullion lecture where he told the students that the Neshoba County he first knew 43 years ago was a vastly different place today in many respects.
"I believe this county weekly, The Neshoba Democrat, played a part in those changes simply by presenting the news - news that is as complete, accurate, objective and fair as possible - and published with good intentions," Dearman said in his lecture.
"I can't imagine any other medium, other than this newspaper, meeting the challenges and opportunities that we faced. A community newspaper is uniquely suited for that," he said, noting that he strongly favored local ownership of newspapers in small communities.
"When it came time for me to retire, I declined the opportunity to sell to a newspaper chain. The people of this town had supported me and I wasn't about to turn it over to a newspaper chain no matter how much they were willing to pay," he said.
After graduating from Meridian High School in 1950, Dearman attended Meridian Junior College for a year before entering the U. S. Navy during the Korean Conflict.
A Lauderdale County native, Dearman was stationed for three years in Hawaii and for a year in California. Military service was followed by a second year at Meridian Junior College.
He entered the University of Mississippi in 1957 and graduated in 1959 with degrees in English and journalism.
While at Ole Miss, Dearman was elected editor of the student newspaper, The Mississippian (now The Daily Mississippian). From 1960 until November 1966 he worked on The Meridian Star as a reporter and photographer in general assignments and later as state editor.
He served as managing editor of the Democrat from November 1966 until February 1968 when he purchased the paper from August G. Eckert and Phyllis Eckert Weber of Louisiana.
