Jack Bass, a journalist and historian who reported from the front lines of the civil rights struggles in his native South Carolina, and who later documented the state’s transformation from a Democratic stronghold to a ruby-red Republican mainstay, died on April 23 in Durham, N.C. He was 91.
His son David said the death, at a hospice facility, was from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Bass lived for decades in Charleston, S.C., but had recently moved to North Carolina to be closer to his children.
Widely considered the dean of South Carolina political journalism, Mr. Bass was the go-to observer of the state’s politics for well over half a century, first as a reporter for The State, published in Columbia, and for The Charlotte Observer, and later as a professor at the College of Charleston.
