Boyd Lewis

Atlanta journalist Boyd Lewis has died at age 77.

Lewis, a Vietnam War veteran, took a single photography class at the University of Memphis before embarking on career as a photographer. He was fired from a Mississippi newspaper for quoting witnesses who disputed a white police officer's account of a murder of a Black man. In 1969, he joined the Black weekly newspaper The Atlanta Voice, dubbed at the time as "the white boy with the Black press."

He later worked at The Atlanta Inquirer, then Creative Loafing. For a time, he also wrote a column for the underground newspaper the Great Speckled Bird.

He covered Klan meetings, marched with civil rights advocate James Meredith, documented the rise of Atlanta mayors Maynard Jackson Jr. and Andrew Young. He also peeked into the pocket-size cultures of Summerville, Cabbagetown, the Strip and the many other tributaries that fed the Atlanta melting pot.

"Boyd was everywhere," said Young in a tribute video The Atlanta Press Club made when it inducted Lewis into its Hall of Fame in 2020. "I don't know when he slept. ... He usually captured an image that went all the way through our minds to our hearts and made us responsive to the need for change, for the cry for justice. He was not just a journalist but an advocate for social change."

Lewis had many other jobs over the years as a classical music disc jockey, a reporter for WABE-FM, where he hosted a radio program about the South's history called "Southwind," and a headline copy writer at CNN.

Read more about Boyd Lewis on ajc.com