Iris Turner was born in Philadelphia in Neshoba County in central Mississippi, a community which received national attention in the summer of 1964 because of the murder there of three young civil rights workers.
Her family had long been active in reform Democratic politics; indeed Homer Turner had been a colonel on the staff of Governor Hugh L. White of Mississippi, who served from 1936 to 1940 and again from 1952 to 1956.
"[2] After three years, The States-Item assigned Kelso in 1954 to the City Hall beat while deLesseps Story Morrison was the long-term mayor.
Her most sensational story was the confinement and release of Governor Earl Kemp Long from a mental institution, a matter which drew national attention.
[1] Kelso covered the civil rights movement and desegregation of New Orleans public schools when those activities were mostly unpopular by white voters.
At Figaro, Kelso wrote a series of stories on her own family, including a focus on her first cousin, Turner Catledge, a former managing editor of The New York Times.
[1] She covered David Duke, the former figure in the Ku Klux Klan who served briefly in the state legislature and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate and for governor.