John M. Hightower was born in Coal Creek, Tennessee, on September 17, 1909, the son of James and Mary Murmann Hightower. From 1927 to 1928, he was a student at the University of Tennessee.
John Hightower was editor of Drug Topics magazine from 1929 to 1930, and from 1931 to 1933, he was a reporter for the Knoxville, Tennessee, News-Sentinel. In 1933, he joined the Associated Press (AP) in Nashville, working up to an editor's position, and in 1936, he was assigned to the AP Washington bureau. In Washington, he did general reporting and news editing, 1936-1940; covered the Navy Department, 1940-1943; and has covered the State Department and international affairs since 1944.
Hightower covered the United Nations organization sessions in San Francisco, 1945; the opening session of the United Nations in London, England, 1946; the European peace treaty sessions, and the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1946 to 1948; the organization of the Marshall Plan; the institution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Japanese Peace Conference, San Francisco, 1951; the Bermuda Conference, 1953; the Berlin Foreign Ministers' Conference, 1954; the Big-Four Summit Conference and the Four-Power Foreign Ministers' Conference, Geneva, 1955; the second Bermuda Conference, 1957; and the NATO Summit Conference, 1957.
Hightower was awarded the Pulitzer Price for international reporting in 1951, when he also received the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award. In 1955, he received a citation from the Overseas Press Club.
On November 19, 1938, he married Martha Nadine Joiner. They had three children.
