William R. Shipp (August 16, 1933 – July 9, 2023) was an American author,[1] reporter, editor, and columnist who covered Southern politics and government for more than five decades.
[4] After Shipp came home from military service in 1956, he worked full-time at the Atlanta Constitution editing and writing, during which time over the next 30 years he covered the civil rights movement, along with the early days of the space program, numerous political campaigns, and breaking stories all over the world.
Shipp was a regular panelist on The Georgia Gang, a weekly commentary program on news and politics which appeared on WAGA-TV, Channel 5.
[6] In 1981 Shipp wrote Murder at Broad River Bridge: The Slaying of Lemuel Penn by Members of the Ku Klux Klan, a nonfiction account of the 1964 murder of Lemuel Penn, a black lieutenant colonel in the army reserves who, on his way home to Washington, D.C., was shot to death near the Oglethorpe-Madison county line by members of the Athens Ku Klux Klan.
[1] In 1997 Shipp published The Ape-Slayer and Other Snapshots, a collection of more than 50 essays and columns on subjects both personal and political.