Virginia Prewett
Virginia Prewett (1919 – April 7, 1988) was a U.S. journalist whose writing focused on Latin America
Biography
Virginia Prewett was born in Gordonsville, Tennessee, in 1919.{{Cite news |date=1988-04-09 |title=Virginia Prewett Mizelle, Newsletter Publisher, Dies |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1988/04/10/virginia-prewett-mizelle-newsletter-publisher-dies/63adb6ec-2960-4b56-9b2b-4e2d1449a723/ |access-date=2024-05-07 |newspaper=The Washington Post |language=en-US |issn=0190-8286}}{{Cite news |date=1968-05-26 |title=Writer: End Race Feud |work=The Nashville Tennessean}}{{Cite news |last=Ball |first=Lamar Q. |date=1942-02-20 |title=Latins Admire Cordell Hull, Writer Says |work=The Atlanta Constitution}} She spent her teenage years living in Spain, then studied at Cumberland University, the University of Toulouse, and New York University.{{Cite news |date=1968-05-24 |title=Miss Prewett To Address Grads |work=The Daily News-Journal}}
In the 1940s, after beginning her career as a reporter at the Nashville Tennessean and Lebanon Banner, she became a foreign correspondent in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico for the Chicago Sun and Sun-Times, with her writing widely syndicated through the publication's news service. She also worked briefly on Latin American issues for the International Rescue Committee in the late '40s.
Prewett went on to cover Latin America on a freelance basis for a variety of publications, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, New Republic, Herald Tribune, Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, and Washington Times. From 1959 into the 1960s, she wrote a syndicated North American Newspaper Alliance column. Then, in the '60s and '70s, she wrote a column for the Washington Daily News. After moving to Washington, D.C., in 1966, she spent 18 years producing "The Hemisphere Hotline," a newsletter focusing on inter-American affairs.
She was the author of three books, beginning with Reportage on Mexico (1941).{{Cite news |last=Hale |first=Martha |date=1941-04-16 |title=Mexico Up and Doing |work=Nashville Banner}} This was followed by The Americas and Tomorrow in 1944.{{Cite journal |last=Bierck |first=Harold A. |date=1944-12-01 |title=Review: The Americas and Tomorrow , by Virginia Prewett |url=https://online.ucpress.edu/phr/article/13/4/462/71746/Review-The-Americas-and-Tomorrow-by-Virginia |journal=Pacific Historical Review |language=en |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=462–463 |doi=10.2307/3634359 |jstor=3634359 |issn=0030-8684}} In the early 1950s, Prewett temporarily left journalism and attempted to establish a farm in the forests of Brazil.{{Cite news |date=1953-05-19 |title=Not-So-Frail 'Second Sex' |work=The Knoxville Journal}} This experience resulted in her 1953 memoir Beyond the Great Forest.
For her coverage of Latin America, she received a Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 1964.
Prewett, described by some as a conservative journalist, was a co-founder of the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba.{{Cite book |last=Magill |first=Frank N. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nq1GU6I5umQC |title=The 20th Century A-GI: Dictionary of World Biography, Volume 7 |date=2013-05-13 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-59334-5 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=D'Haeseleer |first=Brian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w6KmEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA211 |title=The Salvadoran Crucible: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979–1992 |date=2017-12-15 |publisher=University Press of Kansas |isbn=978-0-7006-2512-3 |language=en}} She was honored for her work by the Brazilian and Guatemalan governments, for her opposition to Juan Perón and Fidel Castro, respectively.
In 1949, she married William R. Mizelle, becoming Virginia Prewett Mizelle, but she continued to write under her maiden name.