Patterson wrote a signed newspaper editorial every day for eight years. An editorial he wrote in 1963, "A Flower for the Graves", was considered so moving that he was asked to read it on live television by Walter Cronkite, the leading news anchorman of the era. The editorial was in response to the notorious church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama which killed four black girls, all under the age of 15. He was once approached by the FBI, who wanted him to write an article about Martin Luther King Jr.'s alleged infidelities which they had uncovered through wiretaps. Patterson told them "We're not a peephole journal. We don't print that kind of stuff."