died three days later at age 31.
W.A.’s tragic death in 1934 did not stop the presses.
One of his younger brothers, Cornelius Adolphus “C.A.” Scott, took the helm.
C.A. Scott made a promise to his brother, W.A., who was on his deathbed, that he would take charge of the newspaper and keep it running.
The youngest son of nine children, C.A. Scott was born in Edwards, Miss., on Feb. 8, 1908.
His father, the Rev. Dr. William A. Scott Sr., was a Christian church minister and a publisher.
His mother, Emmeline Southall Scott, was an active worker in the church and in the printing business, helping her husband print church bulletins that were distributed throughout Mississippi.
C.A. came to Atlanta in 1925 with two of his older brothers — W.A. and Aurelius — to attend Morehouse College, completing his studies in 1929.
He became editor and general manager of the Atlanta Daily World in 1934 following his brother’s untimely death.
Scott served as editor, general manager and publisher for 63 years.
In 1946, two African-American couples were murdered in daylight near Monroe, Ga., by a mob that tied them up and shot them hundreds of times with rifles, shotguns, pistols and a machine gun.
Responding to the horror of the “Monroe Massacre,” C.A. Scott immediately set up a fund through the Atlanta Daily World to raise money for the victims’ families.
Two years later, after editorializing in favor of allowing Blacks on the Atlanta Police Department, Scott participated in the selection of the city’s first African-American police officers.
The Atlanta Daily World also waged a campaign in the 1940s to increase the pay of Black teachers, who were paid about half as much as White teachers.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Atlanta Daily World filled its pages with information about court cases and lawsuits filed to desegregate public facilities.
Scott also kept a young African-American father, who was accused in 1960 of raping a White woman, from dying in the electric chair.
Along with running the newspaper, Scott also received numerous journalism and business awards.
He was inducted into the African-American Newspaper Journalism Hall of Fame in 1990 and received the Pioneer Black Journalist Award from the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists in 1991.
C.A. Scott was named publisher emeritus in 1997. He died May 7, 2000 at age 92.
M. Alexis Scott, granddaughter of the paper’s founder W.A. Scott II, became publisher of the Atlanta Daily World in 1997.
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