OF LOCAL LORE & LAWYERS By: Joe Jarret
Attorney At Law, University of Tennessee
PAUL Y. ANDERSON: WITNESS TO THE LAW Son of Knoxville In an era where allegations of fake news, muckraking, and shoddy reporting are cast upon many members of the media, it comes as no surprise that Knoxville’s most accomplished, yet least known newspaper reporter, is hardly a household name. Yet, Paul Y. Anderson, a man unschooled in the law, found himself in the midst of some of the most historically significant legal issues of the twentieth century. And, unlike some people upon whom greatness is thrust, Paul Y. Anderson thrust himself into issues not for the faint of heart.
daily risk of assassination.” In the summer of 1932, while working from the Washington, D.C., bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Anderson reported on Army troops, armed with sabers and rifles with fixed bayonets, breaking up demonstrations of WWI veterans seeking payment of military bonuses.
The Pulitzer
The Early Years:
“For his highly effective work in bringing to light a situation which resulted in revealing the disposition of Liberty Bonds purchased and distributed by the Continental Trading Company in connection with naval oil leases.”
According to Knoxville historian Jack Neely,1 Paul Y. Anderson grew up tough, on Sevierville Pike, the son of stonecutter Holston Anderson. Sadly, Holston was killed in a quarry accident when a faulty derrick fell on him, crushing him to death. His mother, Elizabeth, was a South Knoxville schoolteacher, and tried her best to raise Paul and his two siblings alone. Anderson graduated from Central High School (the school for kids who lived outside of city limits), and his education stopped there because he knew he couldn’t help support the family by sitting in a college classroom. Rather, the young Paul delivered telegrams and newspapers, and performed other odd jobs.
An Untimely Death
A Reporter is Born In 1911, Paul went to work for the old Knoxville Journal as a reporter. It is said that Paul learned enough on the job to impress big-city editors. So much so, that at the tender age of 19, he landed a job with the St. Louis Times in 1912, and a year later, with the St. Louis Star. In 1914 Anderson married Beatrice Wright of East St. Louis, and later that year, was hired by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 2 In 1923, after two years as an editorial writer, Anderson was unable to persuade the Post-Dispatch to send him to Washington D.C., so he resigned and went to the capitol as a freelance reporter. His first major bit of reporting was on the Teapot Dome Scandal 3 and later that same year, he went to Chicago to cover the trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, both 19, who had abducted and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Paul was quickly rehired by the Post-Dispatch and, in 1925, much to his delight, he was sent back home to nearby Dayton, Tennessee, to cover the Scopes “Monkey Trial.”
On December 6, 1938, after having been unceremoniously dismissed from the job he so loved, and suffering from depression, Anderson, 45, told his housekeeper he was tired of living and took an overdose of sleeping pills, leaving behind a note that read “My usefulness is at an end.” At his funeral in Washington D.C. one of his pallbearers was an old friend, former Associate Justice of the United Supreme Court, Hugo Black. Several luminaries spoke at the somber affair, one of whom was Sen. George Norris, a progressive Republican from Nebraska. Norris’ word were taken down verbatim by a local reporter: “The loss of Paul Anderson will be felt generations to come, because he passed away when the world needs more than ever the fighters for the under privileged and the victims of the abuse of power by those who control our economic life.” He likewise said, “The pen he wielded for so many years in behalf of humanity, on behalf of justice, was more mighty than the sword of the most illustrious warrior who ever fought upon the field of battle.” Paul Anderson is buried in Island Home Baptist Church Cemetery, Knoxville.
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Witness to Violence
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According to author Harper Barnes, 4 Anderson, while covering the 1917 East St. Louis, Illinois race riots, 5 witnessed the deaths of more than a dozen African Americans who had been lynched or shot. A special U.S. House committee that later investigated the riots said Anderson reported “what he saw without fear of consequences, despite running
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December 2019
In 1929, Anderson won the Pulitzer prize for his investigation of what happened to $2.7 million in bonds that were part of a slush fund in the “Teapot Dome” scandal. Anderson had exposed the “Watergate” of his time. The citation to accompany his award read:
DICTA
See, https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/tag/paul-y-anderson/ Lambeth, E. B. (1983). The Lost Career of Paul Y. Anderson. Journalism Quarterly, 60(3), 401-406. The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923. Barnes, H. (2011). Never been a time: The 1917 race riot that sparked the civil rights movement. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. The East St. Louis riots or East St. Louis massacres were a series of outbreaks of labor- and race-related violence that caused the deaths of an estimated 40–250 African Americans in late May and early July 1917.
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