Legendary civil rights reporter Karl Fleming began his life in the hopeless, poverty-stricken tobacco landscape of eastern North Carolina . Raised from age eight to seventeen in a tough, all-white Methodist orphanage, Fleming learned to survive bullying in the rigid caste system among his peers. Largely isolated from the world around him until his first newspaper job in the small town of Wilson, North Carolina, Fleming went on to become Newsweek magazine’s chief civil rights reporter, covering all of the South’s hot spots throughout the 1960s: James Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi, Bull Connor’s suppression of the 1963 Birmingham marches, the Birmingham church bombings, Alabama Governor George Wallace’s protest against school integration, KKK rallies, the march on Selma, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and the murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

In his new book, Son of the Rough South , Fleming writes evocatively and with great candor about how his past as a bullied orphan made him an impassioned civil rights reporter, and an unwilling participant in the struggle when he was severely beaten and left for dead during Los Angeles’ Watts Riots in 1966. He also reveals how the demons of that rough-riding past nearly consumed him once that enormous story left many of its headlines behind. It is a stunning, revealing, unforgettable memoir of all the worlds he knew—black, white, violent, and cloistered—terribly moving and ultimately inspiring. Los Angeles Times Book Reviewer David Garrow wrote that his book is “emotionally gripping… Son of the Rough South is a powerfully vivid testament to how compelling the civil rights struggle was for participants and journalists alike.”

Karl Fleming will present with his wife, journalist, commentator and novelist Anne Taylor Fleming. They live in Los Angeles.

Karl Fleming and Anne Taylor Fleming, in conversation with Hal Cannon, will appear on Saturday, Oct. 28, 3:30 pm, in the Salt Lake City Main Library, Conference Room A/B. Karl will also participate in the “A Collage of Human Rights Experiences: A Panel Discussion” on Saturday, Oct. 28, 12:30 pm, in the Salt Lake City Main Library, Conference Room A/B.