The son of Raleigh News and Observer owner/editor Josephus Daniels and grandson of North Carolina Governor Jonathan Worth, Jonathan Worth Daniels was a distinguished writer and editor in his own right. As a student at the University of North Carolina, he was an active participant in the Carolina Playmakers, and edited The Daily Tar Heel. He passed the North Carolina bar exam despite failing out of Columbia University Law School, but never practiced law.

In 1930, after three years as the News and Observer's Washington reporter, Daniels moved to New York City to write for Fortune magazine and finish a novel. Clash of Angels won him a Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing, which he spent in France, Italy and Switzerland. After another brief stint with Fortune, he returned to Raleigh in 1932 as associate editor of the News and Observer, taking over the editorship when Josephus Daniels was appointed Ambassador to Mexico. During his ten years at the News and Observer, Daniels, a southern liberal and strong supporter of FDR's New Deal, used the editorial page to advocate for equal rights for African-Americans and support of organized labor. He also published two books, contributed articles to national magazines and wrote a weekly column, "A Native at Large" for the Nation.

Daniels spent the war years, 1942-1945, in Washington D.C., working for President Roosevelt on various projects, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Rural Electrification Administration, wartime overseas baseball, and domestic race relations. In 1945 he served briefly as President Roosevelt's, then President Truman's press secretary.

Daniels returned to Raleigh and to the News and Observer, succeeding his father as the newspaper's editor on Josephus Daniels' death in 1948. During his years at the newspaper, he followed a liberal editorial policy, writing in favor of civil rights and school desegregation. He continued to publish dozens of books and articles: biographies, historical studies, including three for children, and social and political commentaries. His devotion to public service included six years representing the United States on the United Nations Subcommission for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities. He was awarded the North Carolina Award for Literature in 1967.

The Charlotte Observer called Daniels "a graceful writer and tart social critic...also a force for progress in North Carolina," especially in race relations.

Excerpt from Tar Heels: A Portrait of North Carolina
Dodd, Mead, 1941

Barbecue and fish muddle put the eating customs and the drinking customs of the people together. Both are dishes which have no direct relationship to drinking. Both go with coleslaw and corn pone. Barbecue, which in North Carolina contends with the hamburger and the hot dog at the roadside eating stands, is pig roasted, preferably over a pit full of coals, and basted with a peppery sauce while it roasts. Fish muddle is the name for a fish stew, the ingredients of which vary with what you have got. Brunswick stew is a thick vegetable stew, which in the old days used to depend upon squirrels for protein content. Both the meat and the vegetable content may be altered without departing from the name. All of these are the dishes of congregation, of the political rally, the country get-together, the bit entertainment of customers and friends. Each dish may be served on the table at home. Each of them may be, along with fried chicken, pies and cakes and boiled eggs, at the church supper. But the barbecues and the fish muddles (both are the names for the gatherings as well as the dishes), in the eastern part of the State, where they are most often held, are occasions for both eating and drinking—and sometimes a little too much of both. But when men gather at the plank tables under the big trees near the smell of pigs roasting in the pits, North Carolina is probably present in the truest and most native fashion ever to be found in the State. Barbecue is a dish which binds together the taste of both the people of the big houses and the poorest occupants of the back end of the broken-down barn.

Clash of Angels. New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930.

The Devil's Backbone: The Story of the Natchez Trace. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962. Also published in later editions.

The End of Innocence. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1954. Also published in later editions.

Frontier on the Potomac. New York: Macmillan, 1946. Also published in a later edition.

The Gentlemanly Serpent and Other Columns from a Newspaperman in Paradise: From the Pages of the Hilton Head Island Packet, 1970-73. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1974.

The Man of Independence. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1950. Also published in a later editions.

Mosby: Gray Ghost of the Confederacy. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959.

Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1970.

Prince of Carpetbaggers. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1958.

The Randolphs of Virginia. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.

Robert E. Lee. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1960.

A Southerner Discovers New England. New York: Macmillan, 1940.

A Southerner Discovers the South. New York: Macmillan, 1938. Published in later edition.

Stonewall Jackson. New York: Random House, 1959.

Tar Heels: A Portrait of North Carolina. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1941. Also published in a later edition.

They Will Be Heard: America's Crusading Newspaper Editors. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965.

The Times Between the Wars: Armistice to Pearl Harbor. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966. Also published in a later edition.

Washington Quadrille: The Dance beside the Documents. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968.

White House Witness, 1942-1945. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975.

Mr. Daniels was also a frequent contributor to periodicals, including American Heritage, Atlantic Monthly, Collier's, Ford Times, Forum, Harper's Magazine, Holiday, Life, McCall's, Mississippi Library News, Nation, New Republic, New South, Nieman Fellows, Rebel, Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, Saturday Review of Literature, South Atlantic Quarterly, Southeastern Librarian, Virginia Quarterly Review.

Additional information on Mr. Daniels can be found in:

Eagles, Charles W. Jonathan Daniels and Race Relations: The Evolution of a Southern Liberal. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982.

Eagles, Charles W. Two 'Double V's': Jonathan Daniels, FDR, and Race Relations during World War II. In North Carolina Historical Review 59 (July 1982): 252-270.

North Carolina Writers Pay Tribute to Jonathan Daniels. Proceedings of the North Carolina Writers Conference, 1978. In Pembroke Magazine 11 (1979): 278-286.

Links to further information:

Jonathan Daniels' Papers at UNC