Don Whitehead (April 8, 1908 inInman, Virginia – January 12, 1981) was an Americanjournalist. He was awarded theMedal of Freedom. He won the 1950George Polk Award for wire service reporting.

He was awarded the 1951Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and 1953Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.^[1]

Whitehead studied atUniversity of Kentucky from 1926 to 1928 but did not graduate.^[2]

Beginning in 1928, Whitehead worked for the newspapersLafollette Press and theDaily Enterprise inHarlan, Kentucky, and he covered theHarlan County War.

Beginning in 1935, he worked for theAssociated Press, coveringWorld War II. His beats included coverage of theEighth Army in Egypt, in September 1942, after which he was transferred to cover the American Army inAlgeria. He then covered theAllied invasion of Sicily atGela, with theFirst Infantry Division, theAllied invasion of Italy atSalerno, and the Italian campaign. He landed atAnzio in January 1944, then went to London to prepare for theAllied invasion of France. He landed onOmaha Beach onD-Day (June 6, 1944), with the16th Regiment, of the First Infantry Division, and covered the push from the beachhead,Operation Cobra atSaint-Lô, and the pursuit across France. He got the first story on theLiberation of Paris and covered theU.S. First Army's push into Belgium and into Germany, and the crossing of the Rhine River. He also covered themeeting of American and Russian troops on theElbe River.^[3]

Whitehead covered theKorean War in 1950.^[4] He won the 1953Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for "The Great Deception", his account of a secret trip to the war zone by President-electDwight Eisenhower.

He was Washington bureau chief for theNew York Herald Tribune, in 1956. In 1934, he worked for a year as a columnist for theKnoxville News-Sentinel before leaving to work as an editor for theAssociated Press.^[5][6] His book,The FBI Story was adapted into a 1959 film.

His papers are held at theUniversity of Tennessee.^[7]

Don Whitehead married Marie Patterson on December 20, 1928. They had a daughter, Ruth, and two grandchildren.^[8]

• The FBI Story: A Report to the People. Random House, Ishi Press International. 2011 [1956].ISBN 978-4-87187-335-2.
• Journey Into Crime. Random House. 1960.
• Border Guard: The Story of the United States Customs Service. McGraw-Hill. 1963.
• The Dow Story: The History of the Dow Chemical Company. McGraw-Hill. 1968.
• Attack On Terror: The FBI Against the Ku Klux Klan In Mississippi. Funk & Wagnalls. 1970.
• "A Correspondent's View of D-Day".D-Day: The Normandy Invasion In Retrospect. Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, University Press of Kansas. 1971.

Posthumous

• John Beals Romeiser, ed. (2004)."Beachhead Don": reporting the war from the European Theater, 1942-1945. Fordham University Press.ISBN 978-0-8232-2412-8.
• John Beals Romeiser, ed. (September 2006).Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary And Memoirs. Fordham University Press.ISBN 978-0-8232-2675-7.

EnglishWikisource has original works by or about:

Don whitehead

• https://web.archive.org/web/20111122085639/http://ap.org/pages/about/pulitzer/white.html
• http://www.swvamuseum.org/donwhitehead.html
• Guide to the Don Whitehead Journey Into Crime manuscripts, housed at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center

• 1908 births
• 1981 deaths
• 20th-century American journalists
• George Polk Award recipients
• Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting winners
• Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting winners
• American war correspondents
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American male writers
• People from Wise County, Virginia
• Journalists from Virginia
• University of Kentucky alumni
• Journalists from Kentucky
• Recipients of the Medal of Freedom
• 20th-century American male journalists

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