Civil Rights Movement journalist Jim Purks remembered

ALBANY — Friends on Saturday fondly remembered James Harris “Jim” Purks III, a news reporter who wrote compelling accounts of the Civil Rights struggle, former press secretary for President Carter, and instrumental part of Habitat for Humanity and an Episcopal deacon.

Purks died Tuesday at the age of 82.

Gordon Zeese, like Purks a St. Paul’s Episcopal Church parishioner, retired six months ago and moved to St. Simons Island. Zeese said Saturday that he clearly remembers Purks, who he met in the early 2000s, as a generous man and a man of prayer.

“We worked together for three years as mentors for an extension course from the University of the South in Tennessee,” Zeese said. “He was a great guy. He served as a chaplain at Phoebe. He was a great believer in the power of prayer.”

After serving as an Associated Press reporter who covered the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, Purks worked on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign before becoming his press secretary. After joining Habitat for Humanity and collaborating with Habitat founder Millard Fuller, Purks was ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church in December 1999, soon after serving St. Paul’s and working as a chaplain at Phoebe.

It was Purks’ heartfelt first-person account of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a heinous act that left four young black girls dead, that is still considered one of the era’s must-read journalistic pieces.

“I believe my involvement that day was a product of the divine,” Purks said in a 2014 interview with The Albany Herald. “As I sat down to type, the words just came. There was no objectivity; I wrote a first-person account of what I saw and experienced.

“I knew the words I’d written that day were special. There’s no question that was the best writing under pressure I ever did.”

During the Civil Rights era, he regularly provided front-line coverage of the activities of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates. His studies took him to Stanford University in California and the University of Chile in Santiago.

“Through my faith, I can say with great certainty that every path I’ve taken in this life, God has followed me,” Purks said in 2014. “With each crossroad, I could have gone this way but went that way. That’s the thing about God, he’s going to allow you to bloom wherever you’re planted.”

The Rev. Joy Davis, a deacon at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Albany, said she was mentored by Purks as she studied to become ordained.

“The two biggest things he will be remembered for are prayer and healing,” she said. “He was very much into healing.

“One of his biggest assets was that he saw God in everyone. He was selfless. It was difficult to give him anything because he would always give it away to someone else who he thought needed it more.”

Davis said Purks was a great encourager and a cartoonist who was constantly sending people cards, cartoons and notes.

“One of the things everyone has been talking about this week is those encouraging cartoons and notes. Most who got them, including myself, keep them. I have one on the wall in my office. They are kept as treasures,” Davis said.

Carol Fullerton, a member of St. Paul’s, said she has known Purks ever since he came to Albany around 2009.

“He was doing something at St. Paul’s every day,” she said. “He helped with so many area church projects and was especially involved in the church garden, growing food for others.

“In the morning, he would help bag and box up food for Feed My Sheep — a ministry that gave out food to needy people in our community.”

Fullerton said Purks helped raise funds to help a disabled veteran get a service dog, helping create the annual St. Paul’s Barney’s Run, which raises money for regional veterans in need of a service dog.

“He was involved in every facet of church life and in the community. He helped people long after he retired. He was committed to helping people feel happy and letting them know they were loved by God,” Fullerton said.

St. Paul’s rector, the Rev. Lee Lowery, said the passing of Purks is “a great loss for our community.”

“We are feeling the loss,” Lowery said.

Lowery, who came to St. Paul’s five years ago, said Purks was well established at St. Paul’s and in Albany when they met.

“The most important thing — and the thing he will be most remembered for — is that he was a person of prayer. He had the ability to be with people and to pray for them at many different times,” Lowery said.

At 4 p.m. today, there will be a requiem Mass at St. Paul’s with a reception will follow. At 10 a.m. Monday, a committal service will be conducted at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church.

After earning a political science degree, Purks landed a job with the Tampa Tribune, working as a cops reporter/features writer.

“I saw my first traffic fatality during that job, saw the aftermath of a murder/suicide,” he said in 2014. “One day one of the reporters who was a retired Marine asked me to go with him to the state prison to witness an execution. I told myself that was one of the things I wanted to see as a journalist, but it ended up affecting me profoundly. I can’t be in favor now of a system that condemns a man to death.

“I watched this inmate’s body convulse for 13 minutes in the gas chamber before he was finally declared dead. That was a horrifying experience.”

Deciding his chances of becoming a New York Times correspondent would improve if he became fluent in Spanish, he applied for and received an Inner-American Press Association scholarship that allowed him to study for a year at the University of Chile at Santiago. He left for Santiago on March 2, 1960.

“That was a great experience,” he said. “There was a lot of political stuff going on at that time, and in addition to learning Spanish, I got a first-hand look at an important part of that nation’s history.”

Upon his return from Chile, Purks, 24, was selected for a federal grant that allowed him to study for a year at Stanford. He received a master’s degree in Latin American and Luso Brazilian studies and while in Palo Alto went to San Francisco to take The Associated Press’ writing exam.

He aced the test and went to his parents’ home, now in Birmingham, while he awaited a beat assignment from the AP. Editors wanted him to cover the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.

“That was a pretty awesome time,” he said in 2014. “Being there during that era, experiencing first-hand the incredible rallies in the black churches, witnessing the eloquence of Dr. King and the sharp humor of Fred Shuttlesworth, was unforgettable. I was moved by King’s simple eloquence and by the music of the movement. I also saw up-close the faces of hatred in the klansmen, and there were times when I felt my life was in danger when I used a lighted telephone booth to call in my reports at night.”

In addition to his renowned coverage of the 16th Street Church bombing, Purks would realize another bit of notoriety — “My 15 minutes of fame” — from his time covering the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham.

In 2006, journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff wrote a book about the press coverage of the movement. The photograph used as cover art for the pair’s book “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation” shows a 29-year-old Purks, surrounded by King, the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy and Shuttlesworth, scribbling notes on his reporter’s pad.

And while Purks would never realize his dream of writing for the Times, a story about his “footnote” to history did appear in the seminal newspaper on Nov. 6, 2006.

AP reassigned Purks to cover the state Senate in Tallahassee, Fla., where his spiritual path evolved. While working at the Florida state capital, Purks was confirmed at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

After working for Richard Stone’s U.S. Senate bid in Florida, Purks was approached by supporters of Carter, who was looking for someone to run his presidential press campaign in Florida. Carter carried Florida amd brought Purks with him to Washington to serve as one of four press secretaries.

“That was such an incredible experience,” Purks said. “You’d work 28 hours a day for very little money, and the intensity was always so high. You’d see people at their best and worst, but it was so much fun.”

Purks served as a media liaison in the Carter White House, and while the stay was short-lived, in 2014 he recalled that time fondly.

“There were so many little joys revolving around that time in history,” Purks said. “I remember the thrill of riding in the Marine 1 helicopter, taking photos of visits by Anwar Sadat and the Shah of Iran. That was the first time I got to experience tear gas up close and personal from police attempts to break up demonstrations outside the White House.

“One thing that I’m so fed up with, though, is people saying Carter’s was a ‘failed presidency’ or he was the ‘worst president ever.’ He was a human rights advocate — he truly cared about the poor — and he was a man of his word. He was way ahead of the curve on the energy crisis. A lot of the problem was that the elite media were more comfortable dealing with people who rode in limousines and wore fur coats in the White House.”

When Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan, Purks gave the corporate world a try, finally finding a job he loved — with United Way in Chicago.

But he didn’t like the climate and looked south to Habitat for Humanity in Americus. There he worked for 12 years, collaborating with Habitat founder Millard Fuller on two books. While in Americus, Purks began studies necessary to become a deacon of the Episcopal Church an was ordained four years later. He served as a deacon at Calvary Episcopal Church in Americus for nine years, earning induction into the Order of St. Luke, a healing order of the church.

After the deadly tornado that ripped through Americus on March 1, 2007 destroyed his cabin there, he was assigned as deacon at St. Paul’s. He was reassigned to the Good Life City’s St. Patrick’s Church for a short period before moving back to St. Paul’s. He retired as an active deacon there in 2013.

“There were indeed some exciting moments in my career, but I believe one of the times I was most alive was when I worked with AIDS patients while a deacon at Calvary,” Purks said in 2014. “I experienced the bias, prejudice and bigotry that were a part of these people’s everyday lives, and it was an honor to help provide them a place where they could come and not be judged.”

Material from a 2014 article written by Carlton Fletcher was used in this report.