New Book Restores Pittsburgh Journalist Ray Sprigle to His Rightful Place in American History

A new book, Ray Sprigle: A Profile in Journalistic Courage, brings renewed attention to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter whose investigations exposed corruption, injustice and racial oppression—often at considerable personal risk.

Sprigle won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting after uncovering documentary evidence that newly appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black had once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.

Ten years later, at age 61, Sprigle assumed the identity of “James Crawford” and traveled approximately 4,000 miles through the segregated South while passing as a Black man. Working with prominent Black civil-rights leader John Wesley Dobbs, Sprigle entered communities and homes that would ordinarily have been closed to a white reporter.

The resulting 21-part newspaper series, “I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days,” began appearing on the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in August 1948. It introduced many white Northern readers to the humiliations, dangers and institutional injustices Black Americans faced under Jim Crow.

Although Sprigle’s investigation preceded John Howard Griffin’s celebrated Black Like Me by more than a decade, his name and accomplishments are far less widely remembered today.

“Ray Sprigle believed journalism should do more than report what powerful people said,” author Raymond Sarrio said. “He went looking for evidence, entered places other reporters avoided and used his position to expose the treatment of people whose voices were often ignored. Pittsburgh should be extremely proud of him.”

Sarrio, a retired educator, taught U.S. history in California public schools for 39 years and taught logic and argumentation at Chaffey College for 33 years. He also served for 33 years as an elected member of a California high school district’s Board of Education.

Sarrio wrote the book to make Sprigle’s work accessible to today’s readers, particularly students, teachers, journalists and Pittsburgh residents interested in the city’s history.

The book also examines Sprigle’s reporting on mental hospitals, coal mines, illegal gambling, wartime black markets and other subjects. Together, these investigations reveal a journalist who repeatedly challenged powerful institutions and made the treatment of ordinary people the focus of his work.

“At a time when the public is debating the value and responsibilities of journalism, Ray Sprigle’s career offers a powerful example of what determined, evidence-based reporting can accomplish,” Sarrio said. “His story belongs not only to Pittsburgh but to the history of American journalism and the early struggle against Jim Crow.”

Ray Sprigle: A Profile in Journalistic Courage is available through Amazon in paperback and hardcover editions.

Review copies, author interviews, photographs and additional information are available upon request.

Media Contact

Raymond Sarrio
Email: rsarrio@gmail.com
Amazon book page:
https://a.co/d/0dHyProQ