Sallie Bingham, the author, playwright, philanthropist, feminist and political activist whose feud with her brother helped topple the Kentucky publishing and media dynasty into which she was born, died on Wednesday at her home in Santa Fe, N.M. She was 88.
Clara Bingham, a niece, said the cause was a stroke.
The family drama began in 1918, when Ms. Bingham’s paternal grandfather, John Worth Bingham, bought two newspapers, The Louisville Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times. The money came from John Bingham’s second wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, the widow of an oil and railroad tycoon. She died in 1917, less than a year after the wedding, and for decades there were suspicions that the elder Mr. Bingham, known as the Judge, had a hand in her death.
The newspapers, run next by Ms. Bingham’s father, Barry Bingham Sr., flourished in the decades that followed. They won Pulitzer Prizes and became known for their liberal political positions. But by the 1980s, the newspaper industry was in financial trouble.
Ms. Bingham, meanwhile, had been living since college in New York City, where she made a career as a writer, publishing a novel and numerous short stories. But in 1977, after her second divorce, she went home to Louisville hoping to advance her playwriting career at a new theater there and to improve family relations.
Her brother Barry Jr. was now the newspapers’ boss, the job having come to him after the oldest Bingham brother, Worth, died in a car accident in 1966.
Back home, Ms. Bingham dutifully attended board meetings for a few years before joining The Courier-Journal’s staff, as book-page editor, in 1981. She soon began questioning the paper’s treatment of its employees, particularly women and members of minority groups, and publicly joined a political committee, violating the company’s ethics rules.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Sallie Bingham, Author at the Center of a Newspaper Drama, Dies at 88 appeared first on New York Times.
