Harold E. Martin

Harold Eugene Martin (October 4, 1923 – July 4, 2007) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper editor and publisher who was also a director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. During his career, Martin lived in the U.S. states of Alabama, New York, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas. Martin won the Pulitzer in 1970 as the editor of the morning Montgomery Advertiser and the afternoon Alabama Journal. The Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting recognized a series of articles that exposed the use by pharmaceutical companies of state prisoners as subjects in drug experimentation and as sources of blood plasma. Martin hired two detectives to help him gather the information, but he also had an inside source within the prison system. The revelations brought about a shakeup of the state corrections department under then rival Governors Albert Brewer and George C. Wallace, Jr.While publisher at the Montgomery Advertiser, Martin led an investigation by the newspaper into a police cover up involving planting a gun on Bernard Whitehurst who was shot in the back and killed. The investigation eventually led to the resignation of the Montgomery police chief and the mayor. To dispute the claim that newspaper fabricated stories Martin, took and passed a polygraph.At the Montgomery Advertiser, Martin also opposed Governor Wallace's segregationist policies. An irate Wallace cancelled state advertising in the newspaper by the public-owned liquor business, an action which may have cost the company as much as $500,000. "Harold Martin never flinched," recalled Ray Jenkins, the Advertiser's former executive editor.Martin was born to Rufus John Martin and the former Emma Meadows in Cullman, the seat of Cullman County in northern Alabama. The family moved to Birmingham, the state's largest city, where Martin graduated from Phillips High School and was a newspaper copy reader. He served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II.Martin procured a