Author and Columnist Sam Francis Dies
Columnist, author, and frequent AR contributor Samuel Francis died on the evening of February 15th of complications from heart surgery two weeks earlier.
Mr. Francis was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on April 29, 1947. He was educated at The Johns Hopkins University (B.A., 1969) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which he received a Ph.D. in modern history in 1979. From 1977 to 1981, he was a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., specializing in foreign affairs, terrorism, and intelligence and internal security issues. From 1981 to 1986, he was legislative assistant for national security affairs to Senator John P. East (Republican—North Carolina) and worked closely with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, of which Senator East was a member.
Mr. Francis joined the editorial staff of The Washington Times in 1986 as an editorial writer. He served as Deputy Editorial Page Editor of The Washington Times from 1987 to 1991, as Acting Editorial Page Editor from February to May, 1991, and as a staff columnist through September, 1995.
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Mr. Francis received the Distinguished Writing Award for Editorial Writing of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in both 1989 and 1990. He was a finalist for the National Journalism Award (Walker Stone Prize) for Editorial Writing of the Scripps Howard Foundation in 1989 and 1990.
His twice-weekly column was nationally syndicated through Creators Syndicate.
Mr. Francis was the author of several articles and studies of international and domestic terrorism, including The Soviet Strategy of Terror (1981; rev. ed., 1985).
A prolific writer on issues of public policy, he published articles or reviews in numerous newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, U.S.A. Today, National Review, The Occidental Quarterly, of which he was Associate and Book Editor, and Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, of which he was a Contributing Editor and for which he wrote a monthly column “Principalities and Powers.”
He wrote often for American Renaissance, and was a speaker at every biennial AR conference, beginning in 1994.
He was the author of Power and History: The Political Thought of James Burnham (1984) and Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism (1993).
Sam Francis was a dear friend, a brilliant thinker, and a courageous writer. American thought and journalism have been greatly diminished by his untimely death.
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Sam Francis with Sam Dickson, James
Russell, and Jared Taylor
at the 2002 American Renaissance conference. |
(Posted on February 16, 2005)