Amelia Penland, 79; Georgia Journalist Battled KKK in Print

Amelia Penland, 79, who as a young small-town Georgia journalist battled the Ku Klux Klan with her typewriter, died of undisclosed causes Saturday at her home in Aiken, S.C.

After earning her journalism degree from the University of Georgia in 1948, the former Amelia Knoedler became the editor of the weekly Unadilla Observer. She began writing about the Klan after covering an election in which members caned a black man trying to vote, and countered with editorials and columns every time the Klan struck out at blacks, Catholics and Jews.

In 1950, Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill invited her to address the state via radio, and she criticized Gov. Herman Talmadge for his inaction against the racist group. The Klan burned a cross in her yard, scrawled threats on her windows and told her to leave town. She retaliated by exposing local Klan members’ identities.

Her bravery earned coverage in national newspapers and lifelong admiration. In 2002, she was named one of the South’s finest civil rights journalists in the annual Ralph McGill Lecture at the University of Georgia. She moved to Aiken in 1952 as the Augusta Chronicle’s first South Carolina correspondent. She left journalism in 1956 when she married Robert Penland.