Retired newspaper editor and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ira B. Harkey Jr. died early Sunday afternoon in Kerrville, Texas.

Harkey, 88, had been a journalist and editor in New Orleans and Pascagoula, where he worked at The Times-Picayune and was editor and publisher of The Chronicle Star, predecessor of The Mississippi Press, for 14 years.

Harkey's eldest son, Ira III, said his father died of complications from Parkinson's disease at Parsons House in Kerrville, where the former journalist had lived for the past two years.

"He was a great man. He was intimidating. He had his way, and he did it his way," said Harkey III, who lives in Ocean Springs, on Sunday.

Harkey Jr. won the Pulitzer in 1963 for his editorials calling for a peaceful 1962 integration of the University of Mississippi, where James Meredith became the first black student.

He was vilified for his editorials, his life threatened, and the Chronicle boycotted as well as its advertisers. A cross was burned in front of the newspaper office. A rifle shot was fired into the front door, and a shotgun blast took out his office window before the FBI was called.

A cross already had burned in front of his home after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. Harkey detailed the events in his autobiography, "The Smell of Burning Crosses," in 1967.

"I wasn't surprised that the community or Mississippi newspapers didn't rejoice with me when I won the Pulitzer," he said in a 2003 Sun Herald interview. "I think they hated me even more for being recognized by the Yankees at Columbia University, who they also called Communists."

Jerry St. Pe, who was a young reporter at the Chronicle during the civil rights era, nominated Harkey for Ole Miss' Silver Em journalism award. He said Harkey was a mentor and friend and had a tremendous influence on his life personally and professionally over the years.

"This is a tremendous loss to all of us who have benefited so much by Ira," St. Pe said Sunday. "He was a great journalist who stood tall when Mississippi needed to have a check put on our conscience. He was the conscience of Mississippi."

After bringing The Chronicle from a weekly to a twice-a-week paper and then five-day publication, he sold it. He went on to teach journalism at Ohio State University, then to the University of Alaska, and joined the staff at Columbia University.

Harkey came over from New Orleans and bought the Pascagoula paper in 1949.

Harkey III said his father never pushed his seven children into the newspaper business, but supported Ira III's 26-year career in the field. Two granddaughters of the Pulitzer Prize winner are now in journalism.

Five of the children remain in Jackson County, including Circuit Court Judge Dale Harkey; one lives in Beaumont, Texas; and one in Minneapolis. Harkey and his wife, Virgie, had retired to Kerrville.

Funeral services will be 3 p.m. Tuesday at First United Methodist Church in Kerrville, and at 3 p.m. Friday at the chapel and the family tomb in the Lakelawn-Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.