Beverly Joy Busby Wilkinson

Beverly Joy Busby Wilkinson

Beverly Joy Busby was born and raised in the Deep South, an era of Jim Crow laws and hardened segregation. But despite the racism that surrounded her – in her own house, in the all-white Southern Baptist churches her family attended regularly – she chose a different path.
As the first in her family to graduate from university, she would become a then-rare female journalist, while her interpretation of the Christian faith meant striving for equality and justice. This was considered rebellious in Bogue Chitto, Mississippi, the small, racially divided town where she grew up.
Beverly graduated from the University of Missouri Journalism School in 1953 and quickly got a job at the Baton Rouge Advocate and then the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
She thought she had made it but soon met a new obstacle: female journalists, especially in the South, were often relegated to covering, as she would later recall, garden parties and other “women’s issues.”
She won a journalism prize in 1955 for coverage entitled “Live Colors for Dried Flowers.”
It was at the Times-Picayune that Beverly met another reporter, Jack Edward Wilkinson. Beverly was a dark-haired beauty then; Jack was a tall, skinny, kind of gangling man who lived on Bourbon Street and never thought she’d agree to go out with him. In fact, she refused unless he cut his hair. They married in 1955.
Initially, Beverly Wilkinson followed her husband after he took a job with United Press International and was transferred to several state bureaus. When they arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1958, she landed a job with The Journal – but now she was covering the courts, a plum job then for a young female reporter.
Eventually, she would abandon journalism to have two daughters. When the family moved to New York City in 1964, Beverly Wilkinson found a new calling: liberal political activism. She campaigned for environmental protection and for progressive Democratic candidates. She even helped out in the Black Panthers’ school breakfast program.
The Wilkinsons moved to Atlanta, Ga., in 1969, and Beverly and Jack lived there until his death in 2013. They had many friends, and Beverly enjoyed playing bridge with a vivacious group of younger women and attending services and other activities at Haygood Memorial United Methodist Church.
As her health declined, she moved to Indianapolis in 2015 to be closer to a daughter and her grandchildren.
Beverly Wilkinson died on May 15, 2020, two days after her 89th birthday, of complications from dementia. Survivors include a daughter, Tracy Wilkinson, who resides in Washington, DC, and another daughter, Kelly Wilkinson, who lives in Indianapolis with her three children, Lily, Willow and Cami. Both of Beverly and Jack’s daughters are journalists.