Philip Leslie Graham

Graham, Philip Leslie, 1915–63, American publisher, b. S.Dak. After editing the Harvard Law Review, he served as a law clerk to his mentor, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. In 1940 he married Katharine Meyer Graham, whose father, Eugene Meyer, owned the Washington Post. Meyer named him associate publisher of the Post in 1946, and publisher six months later. After Graham took charge, he gave the Post a new and more politically assertive direction and was considered by many to be an influential journalist. In 1961, the Post acquired Newsweek magazine. After the severely depressed Graham committed suicide in 1963, Katharine Graham took over the company.

See H. Bray, Pillars of the Post (1980); C. M. Roberts, In the Shadow of Power (1989).

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