Golden, Harry, 1902-1981

Harry Golden was journalist and publisher, best known for his quotable editorials in the Carolina Israelite. Born in New York as Harry Goldhurst, he attended City College and worked as a reporter before taking a job with the Charlotte Observer. Staying in North Carolina, he founded the Carolina Israelite, writing every word of the bimonthly paper, and gaining an international readership for his views on civil rights, racism, and other topics of the day. His humorous approach to social issues won him a wide readership, and helped him to operate a pro-civil rights publication in the American South. When a 1928 conviction for mail fraud surfaced in 1958, he was defended by Adlai Stevenson and Carl Sandburg, and eventually pardoned by President Richard Nixon.

Harry Golden was born in eastern Europe early in 1902. While he was still a small child, his family moved first to Canada, and later to New York. By the time of his adulthood, he learned to deal with investments on the New York Stock Exchange. Later, he moved to Charlotte, N.C., and began a career in journalism, writing, publishing. Many of his published works concerned the civil rights movement and social norms in America in the 1960s. Many of his books were best-sellers. Golden died in 1981.

American writer.

Journalist Harry Golden, Jr., began working for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966 and became City Hall correspondent for the newspaper in 1967.

Harry Lewis Golden was born Herschel Goldhirsch on May 6, 1902 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1905 the Goldhirsch family emigrated to Lower East Side of New York City. Golden graduated from P.S. 20 elementary school in 1917 and from East Side Evening High School around 1920. Between 1921 and 1929, he worked various jobs in New York and became a stockbroker. In 1929, Golden's brokerage firm declared bankruptcy and he was convicted for mail fraud and sentenced to five years in the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. Following his parole in 1933, Golden wrote and sold advertising for The New York Daily Mirror and The New York Post.

From 1941 to 1944, Golden worked for the Charlotte Labor Journal and The Charlotte Observer. In 1942, he commissioned The Charlotte News to print the first issue of the Carolina Israelite, which had an initial circulation of 800. Golden first met Carl Sandburg in 1948. In 1950, Golden wrote and published his first book, Jews in American History, with Martin Rywell. During the period 1956-57, Golden began popularizing his civil rights convictions through his articles in the Israelite on "vertical integration."

An accidental fire destroyed his offices in 1958, the year in which he released his first best-seller, Only in America, and his mail fraud conviction and prison sentence were revealed in The New York Herald Tribune. President Richard M. Nixon pardoned him in 1974. Golden died in Charlotte on October 2, 1981.