Tom Lankford

Thomas Earl Lankford (born September 20, 1935 in Piedmont, Calhoun County; died December 31, 2020 in Gadsden) was a reporter and photographer for The Birmingham News during the 1960s, and later an editor, public relations professional, and truck driver.

Lankford was the son of Robert and Mary Asalee Kilgo Lankford. He grew up in Hokes Bluff in Etowah County where his father worked at a steel plant. He enrolled at the University of Alabama as a journalism major and was exceptional for joining "The Machine" without having pledged to a campus fraternity. During his senior year he served as editor of The Crimson White student newspaper. He continued at Alabama, earning a master's degree in journalism and began his career in Columbus, Georgia before joining the Birmingham News as a police reporter in 1959.

As a young reporter Lankford worked closely with law enforcement and with assistant publisher Vincent Townsend during the 1960s. He photographed the violent reception given the Freedom Riders in May 1961.

In late 1963, during the federal investigation of the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church, Lankford went so far as to shoot at J. B. Stoner's empty car outside the National States Rights Party offices, from the back seat of a car driven by an FBI agent. It was hoped the stunt would provoke Stoner to start making angry calls from the phones the FBI had tapped.

Lankford also became involved in the FBI's surveillance of and efforts to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. He listened to a wiretap of A. D. King's telephone and rode with FBI agents to what they believed would be a sexual liaison planned by the King brothers with a group of women, where Lankford was expected to capture incriminating photographs. The attempted sting was unsuccessful.

Lankford left the crime beat for an editor's desk in the late 1960s and left Birmingham to become editor and general manager of The Huntsville News. While there he was part of a group contracted in 1971 to recommend how the state should spend federal grant funds for law enforcement. Governor George Wallace found the group's proposal for, "black-clad, nighttime police force of shock troops similar to Nazi storm troopers," to be "repugnant." The state filed a lawsuit alleging that the group misrepresented their credentials, and they returned $20,000 of their $91,570 commission.

References

• Risen, Clay (January 17, 2021) "Tom Lankford, 85, Dies; Southern Journalist With Divided Loyalties." The New York Times