ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Eugene Patterson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and columnist who helped fellow Southern whites understand the civil rights movement, eloquently reminding the silent majority of its complicity in racist violence, died Saturday evening at his Florida home. He was 89.

Patterson was surrounded by family friends when he died of complications from cancer, according to B.J. Phillips, a spokeswoman for the family.

Patterson was editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1960 to 1968, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for editorial writing and doing a signed column every day for eight years. He wrote about the civil rights movement at a time when many Southern newspapers were reluctant to cover it.