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She decided to run the Post
The Post was her family's company, and Phil ran it. In the middle of her own grief, people asked whom she would bring in to run it, meaning which man. Her answer, in an almost Aretha Franklin way, was that she would do it herself.
She had never thought she would run or build the Post. She felt it had a noble role in the world and that she had to step up to guard and lead it. Then came the Pentagon Papers, the labor strikes, and massively difficult decisions, and her will for what she saw as the cause of the Post pulled the ambition right out of her.
She became one of the great chief executives of the last 50 years and steered the Post through those turbulent years. Her memoir, Personal History, is one of the great accounts of the interior development of a leader.
What happened in the Pentagon Papers case?
The New York Times began publishing the secret Defense Department study of the Vietnam War in June 1971, and the Nixon administration went to court to stop it. The Washington Post then published its own installments. In New York Times Co. v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the government could not block publication.
Why did the Post go public that same year?
The Washington Post Company offered shares to the public in June 1971, days before the Pentagon Papers story broke. The offering raised money, and it also raised the stakes, because investors worried a legal fight could hurt the company. The legal fight went ahead anyway.
What did Personal History win?
Katharine Graham's memoir Personal History appeared in 1997. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for biography or autobiography. The book covers her childhood, her marriage to Phil Graham, and her years leading the Post.
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