O.C. McDavid’s remarkable career took him from sleeping in the back shop of a small-town newspaper to leadership positions at some of the South’s most prominent publications — and ultimately to a second career as a respected artist and sculptor.
Born May 30, 1911, in a log cabin in Ruth in Lincoln County, McDavid moved to McComb as a teenager in search of a better education. He found work as a janitor and gopher at the McComb Enterprise, where part of his compensation was a bed in the newspaper’s back shop. He advanced from printer’s devil to printer, reporter and, while still in his early 20s, city editor.
In 1934, McDavid purchased the Perry County Herald in New Augusta, which he jokingly described as “the poorest newspaper in the poorest town in the poorest county in the poorest state in the nation.” After giving up the paper the following year, he became manager of the Mississippi Press Association at the urging of his friend George Lemon Sugg.
McDavid subsequently worked at the Gulf Coast Guide under legendary Mississippi newspaperman Clayton Rand and returned to the McComb Enterprise as advertising manager. In 1938, he joined the Jackson Daily News as city editor and capitol reporter.
His journalism career was interrupted by World War II when his National Guard unit was inducted into the Army in 1940. McDavid served five years with the 31st “Dixie” Division in the Pacific, performing duties that ranged from publishing the division newspaper to helping re-establish local governments in communities liberated from Japanese occupation. He left the Army in 1945 with the rank of captain.
Returning to journalism, McDavid edited the Columbian-Progress in Columbia, where he also launched the Sunday Mirror. He later owned the Wilk-Amite Record in Gloster and the Tylertown Times. In 1951, he served as president of the Mississippi Press Association.
McDavid went on to work for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and the Jackson State Times before becoming Mississippi state editor of the Birmingham News. In 1957, he returned to the Jackson Daily News, where he served as news editor and later managing editor.
During those years, McDavid developed an interest in art and began writing an art column. After retiring from journalism in 1981, he pursued a successful second career as a painter and sculptor, becoming particularly known for his work with metal and a welding torch. He also continued writing occasionally about art for the Clarion-Ledger and other publications.
McDavid died in 1998 at age 87, but his influence on Mississippi journalism continues through the O.C. McDavid Journalism Summit. Established in 1999 following a generous memorial gift from his family to the Mississippi Press Foundation, the annual program brings together Mississippi college and university journalism and communications students with leading journalists, educators and artists. Reflecting McDavid’s dual passions, the summit traditionally includes programming on community life and the arts, as well as presentation of the Better News Media Contest Student Division awards.
His son, Gene McDavid, who was longtime publisher of the Houston (TX) Chronicle, joined his father in the MPA Hall of Fame in 2002.
A journalist, editor, publisher, soldier and artist, O.C. McDavid built a career that spanned nearly every facet of newspaper work. His legacy lives on not only in Mississippi journalism history but in generations of aspiring journalists encouraged through the program that bears his name.
