Ira B. Harkey Jr. (January 15, 1918 – October 8, 2006) was an American writer, professor of journalism, and editor and publisher of the Pascagoula Chronicle-Star in Mississippi from 1951 to 1963. Harkey was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1963 for his anti-segregation editorials during the civil rights crisis surrounding the admission of James Meredith, a black man, to the University of Mississippi at Oxford, Mississippi in 1962.