Conservative Voice James J. Kilpatrick Dies

By Meymo Lyons

James J. Kilpatrick, a prominent conservative voice for half a century has died after a long illness.

Kilpatrick died last night at George Washington University Hospital in Washington. He was 89.

In the mid-1950s, as a vocal supporter of racial segregation ,Kilpatrick become something of a national figure for his fiery editorials in the now defunct Richmond Virginia News Leader.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision declaring an end to legal public school segregation, Kilpatrick wrote, “These nine men repudiated the Constitution, spit upon the Tenth Amendment and rewrote the fundamental law of this land to suit their own gauzy concepts of sociology. If it be said now that the South is flouting the law, let it be said to the high court: you taught us how.”

But as the South changed, so did Kilpatrick, who dropped his fervent defense of segregation a decade later.

His newspaper columns were first syndicated in 1964, and two years later he left Richmond for Washington to write columns full time.

TV watchers in the 1970s knew Kilpatrick as the conservative half of the ''Point-Counterpoint'' segment of CBS' ''60 Minutes.''

His sparring with liberal commentator Shana Alexander over the Vietnam war and womens rights were famously parodied on ''Saturday Night Live'' by Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin.