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1,700+ Members of Congress Owned Slaves

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Updated Jan. 21

Project Published as Some Seek to Sanitize History
In Fashion World, All Knew Who ‘Andre’ Was
Journal-isms, American U. Announce Partnership
Battling COVID, Smith ‘Didn’t Know’ If He’d Make It

16 Thinkers Speculate About the Future of Media

DirecTV Move to Drop Right-Wing Outlet Applauded
Funds to Report on Indigenous Women Threatened
Journalists Reflect on Encounters With King:
William Drummond, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Carole Simpson
CBS News Picks Anthony Galloway to Head Streaming
‘Printing Hate’ Pivots to Black Press

Short Takes: Scuba divers and transatlantic slave trade; usage of “officer-involved shooting”; Lawrence Jones; PBS diversity initiatives; Ivette Davila-Richards; Margaret Holt; Kendis Gibson; businesses following through on DEI; Langston Taylor and Zachary T. Sampson;

Independent nonprofit news organization in Houston; dealing with microaggressions; Maity Interian; WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times; Ashanti Blaize and SPJ-L.A.; Star Jones Lugo; “Stories behind the census” in Green Bay, Wis.; Ted Poston; worrying trend against free expression in Peru; two more journalist murders in Mexico; Africans to examine their coverage in global media outlets.

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The Washington Post wrote, “Here’s what that looked like on March 7, 1850. As Sen. Daniel Webster delivered a famous speech about slavery, 46 of the 106 congressmen listening owned human beings. Those slaveholders included Jefferson Davis, Andrew Johnson and Sam Houston.” (Credit: Washington Post)

Project Published as Some Seek to Sanitize History

“From the founding of the United States until long after the Civil War, hundreds of the elected leaders writing the nation’s laws were current or former slaveowners,” Julie Zauzmer Weil, Adrian Blanco and Leo Dominguez wrote for the Washington Post. Their story package went online Jan. 10, has been continually updated, and was displayed on the front page of the Sunday print edition on Jan. 16. Readers have responded, Weil tweeted, with more information.

“More than 1,700 people who served in the U.S. Congress in the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries owned human beings at some point in their lives, according to a Washington Post investigation of censuses and other historical records,” the story began.

“The country is still grappling with the legacy of their embrace of slavery. The link between race and political power in early America echoes in complicated ways, from the racial inequities that persist to this day to the polarizing fights over voting rights and the way history is taught in schools.

“The Washington Post created a database that shows enslavers in Congress represented 37 states, including not just the South but every state in New England, much of the Midwest, and many Western states.

“Some were owners of enormous plantations, like Sen. Edward Lloyd V of Maryland, who enslaved 468 people in 1832 on the same estate where abolitionist Frederick Douglass was enslaved as a child. Many exerted great influence on the issue of slavery, like Sen. Elias Kent Kane, who enslaved five people in Illinois in 1820, and tried to formally legalize slavery in the state. . . .”

“For the first 30 years of American lawmaking, from 1789 to 1819, more than half the men elected to Congress each session were slaveholders.

“As Northern states outlawed slavery, the proportion of congressmen who were slaveowners declined. But some congressmen in New England continued to enslave people until at least 1820, and some representatives of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other states continued to enslave people for at least a decade longer. . . . .”

In the print edition, the story continued on the center pages of the A section, with a state-by-state list of the 1,739 members of Congress who enslaved people.

The authors wrote, “This database helps provide a clearer understanding of the ways in which slaveholding influenced early America, as congressmen’s own interests as enslavers shaped their decisions on the laws that they crafted.

“One example: When Congress voted on the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which prohibited the expansion of slavery in the northern half of the country, the House and Senate contained a nearly equal number of slaveholders and non-slaveholders, a Post analysis found. Almost twice as many slaveholders, 44 percent, voted against the agreement, compared with 25 percent of non-slaveholders. The law was crafted by a slaveholder, Henry Clay, who is so renowned as one of America’s greatest statesmen that 16 counties across the country are named for him. . . .”

“Historian Loren Schweninger, who spent years driving to more than 200 courthouses across the South to collect records on slavery, notes the importance of lawmakers’ personal stake in slavery as they passed laws codifying the practice. ‘They were protective of the institution, that’s for sure,’ Schweninger said of state and federal lawmakers’ relationship with slavery. “There was brutality and there was all kinds of exploitation of slaves — but still there were laws.’

“Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he thinks about that history in the halls of Congress, from the portraits on the walls to the votes once taken there.

“ ‘I’m very conscious of this as only the fourth Black person popularly elected to the United States Senate. … The very monuments you walk past: There’s very little acknowledgment of the degree that slavery, that wretched institution, shaped the Capitol,’ Booker said in an interview. He added, ‘All around you, the very Capitol itself, was shaped by this legacy that we don’t fully know or don’t fully acknowledge.’

“The same is true of the White House. Of the first 18 U.S. presidents, 12 were enslavers, including eight during their presidencies.

“To Booker, those stories about his predecessors in Congress call for action from their counterparts today — namely, a bill he has championed that would commission the first national study on reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.

“Without acknowledging the harm and trauma caused by slavery, both for the enslaved and their descendants, ‘it’s very hard to heal and move on,’ Booker said. ‘We have never really tried, in any grand way as a country, to take full responsibility for the evil institution of slavery and what it has done.’ . . .”

In a Twitter thread, Weil wrote, “Since I published my database of slaveholders in Congress, readers have sent me chilling documents: Birth certificates of babies born in slavery. Newspaper ads placed by congressmen looking for people who fled their plantations. A letter a reader’s ancestor sent home from battle.”

In Fashion World, All Knew Who ‘Andre’ Was


“The fashion editor André Leon Talley (pictured) achieved rarefied status in an industry that he had to bend to his will. When he arrived in New York in the early ’70s with his degrees in French history and literature, he was a tall, skinny Black man from the segregated South who barreled through the gilded doors of a world that was populated by European aristocrats, ivory-skinned socialites, limousine liberals and snobs,” Robin Givhan wrote Wednesday for The Washington Post.

 “He rose through the ranks due to his intelligence and savvy, as well as his unrelenting belief in the glories and glamour of fashion.

“When he died Tuesday at 73, he had achieved greatness in his profession. He’d served as creative director of American Vogue and even today, no other Black person has held that title. His very presence in a film or television show — ‘Sex and the City,’ ‘Empire’ — had become shorthand for fashion in all of its hierarchical majesty.

“He had written multiple memoirs, curated fashion exhibitions and counseled aspiring designers, as well as veteran ones. In fashion, simply saying André was enough. Everyone knew who that was. . . .”

A photo of the Journal-isms Roundtable in April 2017 so struck Haitian American artist Lola Poisson that she made a 30×40 oil-on-canvas rendering of the image, by George Dalton Tolbert IV. “The first time I saw the picture I fell in love with it. . . I said, ‘Wow this looks like a painting. I have to have it on my wall,” she said.

Journal-isms, American U. Announce Partnership


The American University School of Communication and Journal-isms Inc. announced a partnership Thursday intended to connect veteran journalists and students, sharing real-world experience across the generations and supporting the District of Columbia school’s efforts to increase its reach into communities of color. 

The partnership will also provide a home base for Journal-isms that will help ensure its future stability.

“Almost from its inception, I have read Journal-isms and been mightily impressed with how Richard Prince has carved out a singular and unique niche in the media universe,” said Sam Fulwood III (pictured), dean of the school. 

“Nobody in the world, that I’m aware of, has the breadth of knowledge, reach of contacts and pulse of what is important in the world of journalism and diversity as does Richard. We’re delighted – and lucky – to have him join us at American University and we hope to be a source of support for the continuation of his vitally important work.”

Prince said, “In this time of disinformation, misinformation and racial backlash, it’s important that students, faculty and administrators are enabled with the best ways to report on our multicultural society. News consumers deserve what’s been called the best obtainable version of the truth. We are happy to expand our audience and in turn, to have a new group to learn from.”


Under the partnership, the Journal-isms Roundtable, a monthly dinner group being held via Zoom during the pandemic, will hold most sessions at the school, which is equipped to transmit them virtually.

The Roundtable plans to simulcast its next meeting, featuring cartoonists of color, on Facebook Live at 1 p.m. Eastern this coming Sunday.

“It got to a point where right before New Year’s Eve, I was in the hospital into New Year’s Day. That’s how I brought in the New Year,” Stephen A. Smith said on his return to “First Take” on Monday. (Credit: Screen shot/USA Today)’

Battling COVID, Smith ‘Didn’t Know’ If He’d Make It

“After several weeks away with a serious case of COVID-19, Stephen A. Smith returned to ‘First Take’ and gave a public service announcement about his experiences with the virus, in addition to his inevitable trolling of the Dallas Cowboys and their fans,” Ryan Glasspiegel reported Monday for the New York Post..

“Smith explained that he was hospitalized over New [Year’s], and that he didn’t know if he was going to make it.

“ ‘For me personally, it hit me differently,’ he said.

“Smith tested positive in mid-December but it really hit him right before his hospitalization.

“ ‘You’re assuming that you’ll have a fever, might have a cough, gonna have that massive headache — but you’ll get over it,’ he said. ‘In a lot of cases that was the case. In my case it was totally different.

“ ‘I had 103 degree fever every night. Woke up with chills and a pool of sweat. Headaches were massive. Coughing profusely. And it got to a point where right before New Year’s Eve, I was in the hospital into New Year’s Day. That’s how I brought in the New Year.’

“He said that his doctors told him he would have died had he not been vaccinated.

“ ‘They told me, had I not been vaccinated, I wouldn’t be here. That’s how bad it was. I had pneumonia in both lungs. My liver was bad. It had ravaged me to the point where even now I have [to] monitor my volume — get to the gym every day, walk before you run. Work your way back because I’m still not 100 percent with my lungs, but I’m COVID negative. I’m on the road to recovery. . . .”

(Credit: Illustration by DAQ/Politico)

16 Thinkers Speculate About the Future of Media

“We at POLITICO Magazine decided to take advantage of our milestone — our 15th birthday — to press some experts and media thinkers on what media will look like in the next 15 years,” the magazine said Friday. “What will be the biggest transformations — and how will they affect our public life? Are you optimistic? If so, how do we get to the good part? If you’re concerned, what can we do to avoid the worst outcomes?”

This writer was among the 16 to participate. Others were Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows” and “The Glass Cage,” among other books; Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America and the author of “Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All”; Nicholas Lemann, dean emeritus who continues to teach at Columbia Journalism School, and a staff writer at the New Yorker; Nikki Usher, author of “News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism.”

Also, Akoto Ofori-Atta and Lauren Williams, co-founders of Capital B, a nonprofit local and national Black news organization that launches on Jan. 31; Richard Stengel, former editor of Time and a former undersecretary of state in the Obama administration; Tom Scocca, editor and proprietor of the Indignity newsletter; Lynette Clemetson (pictured), director of the Wallace House and the Knight-Wallace Fellowships at the University of Michigan; Tim Hwang, author of “Subprime Attention Crisis,” a book about the online advertising bubble; Heidi Tworek, a Canada Research Chair and associate professor in history and public policy at the University of British Columbia; Colbert I. King, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with The Washington Post; Eli Pariser, co-director of New_ Public, an incubator for public digital spaces; Kristen Hare of the Poynter Institute; and David Folkenflik, media correspondent for NPR News.

The view from this corner:

“Journalism will move closer to being part of the solution. Too often, as part of the power structure, it has exacerbated the problem.

“Attempts to forecast the future are risky. Who would have predicted the reckoning wrought by the murder of George Floyd, or the internet’s ”information wants to be free’ mantra that endangered legacy media?

“Still, we can trust the census predictions that whites in the United States will become a minority in 2045, and plan for the change that will mean in the demographics of news consumers.

“There are other trends. Foremost is the splintering of the news audience by ideology. The multiplicity of platforms is another. Broadcast television and cable are making way for streaming.

“News deserts keep growing. Hedge funds continue to acquire local news operations and cut staffs.

“Collaborations are increasing, whether globally, as with the Pandora Papers project in which reporting teams worked together to expose corruption, or the Dallas Morning News partnering with the Texas Metro News, a Black-press outlet. Each helps supply what’s missing in the other.

“Will the repression of news media worldwide persist? Joel Simon, former executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, reported at the end of 2021 that record numbers of journalists are imprisoned, and that governments “are waging a frontal assault against independent journalism around the world.”

“There is room for optimism. News consumers want ‘solutions journalism.’ Don’t just tell them the problem; what can they do about it? When those news consumers are increasingly people of color and others previously marginalized, a richer news report should result. Let’s sharpen our defenses against misinformation. Ramp up the research. Put in charge those who champion the interests of those who’ve been missing at the top.” [Added Jan. 21]

DirecTV Move to Drop Right-Wing Outlet Applauded

“DirecTV‘s decision to drop the toxic propaganda outlet One America News (OAN) will help stem the venomous flow of misinformation that fueled the deadly January 6 insurrection,” the leaders of the National Urban League and National Action Network said Jan. 14.

The NAACP, too, last fall had met with AT&T, which owns the majority share of DirecTV, to press the telecommunications company to sever ties. The Congressional Black Caucus issued a similar statement.

John Shiffman reported Saturday for Reuters, “The largest satellite provider in the United States said late Friday it will drop One America News, a move that could financially cripple the rightwing TV network known for fueling conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

“The announcement by DirecTV, which is 70% owned by AT&T, comes three months after a Reuters investigation revealed that OAN’s founder testified that AT&T inspired him to create the network. Court testimony also showed that OAN receives nearly all of its revenue from DirecTV.”

AT&T said at the time it has “never had a financial interest in OAN’s success and does not ‘fund’ OAN. When AT&T acquired DirecTV, we refused to carry OAN on that platform, and OAN sued DirecTV as a result. Four years ago, DirecTV reached a commercial carriage agreement with OAN, as it has with hundreds of other channels and as OAN has done with the other TV providers that carry its programming.” The statement went on to emphasize that DirecTV “does not dictate or control programming on the channels. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.”

Marc H. Morial (pictured, above), National Urban League president and CEO, said in the Jan. 14 statement, “For years, OAN has shamelessly promoted dangerous falsehoods and conspiracy theories, inflicting great harm not only to the subjects of its lies but to the nation as a whole.

“OAN’s unrelenting hype of the Big Lie directly contributed to the horrifying January 6 attack on Congress and the ongoing assault on voting rights and democracy. DirecTV’s decision effectively neutralizes . . . one of the most dangerous weapons in the arsenal of far-right extremists. . . .”

“To observers, especially those in Indian Country, it would seem to be big news that a $10-million grant for Native-focused reporting had been ‘canceled,’ ” Rob Capriccioso reported (Credit: Murray Bush/ flux photo)

Funds to Report on Indigenous Women Threatened

“Ten million dollars in philanthropic funding intended to support reporting on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two Spirit crisis in Indian Country is being retooled – and potentially cut down – the recipient of the grant tells Indigenous Wire,” Rob Capriccioso reported Wednesday for the newsletter and blog he founded this month.

“The money, announced last year by the D.C.-based International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), received fanfare in Indian Country – especially in Native journalism circles – because it was supposed to serve as a much-needed financial resource to strengthen reporting to the general public about abuse toward Indigenous people.

“The topic has long been ignored and under reported, according to the Native American Journalists Association, tribes, and Native citizens themselves.

“The IWMF, a non-profit journalism organization founded in 1990 by well-known PBS journalist Judy Woodruff, spent time promoting the grant in 2021 and advertising for a director to help distribute and oversee it. . . .”

Carole Simpson with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Credit: Carole Simpson)

Journalists Reflect on Encounters With King

Over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, at least three journalists offered reflections on their personal encounters with King.

William Drummond, Journalism Professor at UC Berkeley

Before we move on from Dr. King’s holiday, let me add my two cents. Millions of words have already been posted about him; what have I got to add?

Well, I am one of the few still around who actually met him and covered him back in the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement. Most writers today are reflecting not on the man, but on their impressions of the man drawn from historical accounts. I eye-witnessed the history.

I worked in Louisville from 1966-67, during which years, the city on the Ohio River went through a divisive open-housing struggle. ML visited a number of times to lend his support. His brother, AD Williams King (Alveda’s daddy), was pastor of a prominent Black church in town.

AD and a small band of open-housing activists were marching through white neighborhoods, stirring up the Klan and many other rowdies, much to the chagrin of the city fathers. The city went to court and got an injunction to stop the nightly marches, which were an embarrassment.

It was a frigid night in January when Dr. Martin Luther King, after a stirring speech from the pulpit at Mount Zion Church, led the demonstrators out the church doors with the intention of leading them on a march through a white neighborhood. I followed Dr. King and was at first excited and giddy, but when the doors swung open at the bottom of the steps, I saw a couple of dozen Louisville police officers, and Lt. “Frosty” Dodge warned Dr. King that the march was against the law and he would be arrested if he went any further.

I was at Dr. King’s elbow, with dozens of marchers behind me and dozens of cops in front of me.

I was terrified. It probably showed on my face. I was thinking about an exit strategy.

Dr. King turned around and addressed the demonstrators (but it was as though he was talking to me personally): “If you are afraid to die, you’re not free.” I suddenly felt ashamed.

With that, he turned around and went past Frosty Dodge and the policemen parted, allowing the procession to flow out into the street. Like a sleepwalker, I followed.

The demonstrations continued thereafter without interference from the police. By the spring, Louisville passed an open-housing ordinance.

Hosea Williams, one of ML’s fiery lieutenants, said a few times that Dr. King had caused him to lose his fear of death. I don’t think I believed him.

But that night on the church steps, I saw it with my own eyes.

(From Facebook)

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Veteran Journalist

. . . . King’s support for the demonstrators in Atlanta led to one of the worst experiences of his career. When the students were released after merchants agreed to desegregate, King was forced to remain in jail and was transported to a prison miles away from Atlanta. He was made to lie in the back of a police vehicle with a dog snarling at him the entire way there. Even after his release, challenges remained throughout the South.

I met King many months after his release on a bright, sunny day, when I happened to be on Sweet Auburn Avenue with a colleague, who suddenly turned to me and said, “There’s Dr. King.” I was awed by this chance meeting with a man who, at that point, was already the icon of the civil-rights movement.

I ran up to him, prepared to introduce myself and to lavish praise on him for all that he had done for Atlanta and the students, and for his sacrifices on behalf of black Americans. As I started to introduce myself — before I could get past my name — he reached for my hand, energetically shaking it, while telling me he was proud to meet me. “You are doing a such magnificent job down there,” he said, a reference to my enrollment at the all-white University of Georgia, where Hamilton Holmes and I were the first African-American students to attend earlier that year. As I recalled, in a book I wrote years later, King told me that education “was the key to our freedom, and then he generously thanked me again and wished me success.”

Before I could tell him how proud of him I was, he was mobbed by other admirers, which prevented him from seeing the tears rolling down my cheeks. I will always remember that moment and what it taught me about King and one of his core values: humility. . . .

(From The New Yorker, 2018, publicized Sunday.)

Carole Simpson, Retired ABC, NBC Anchor

I credit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with helping launch my 40- year-long career as a broadcast journalist. I was just starting out as a 24-year-old radio reporter in Chicago when Dr.King brought his civil rights crusade to the North in 1965. I was assigned to cover him and he gave me the scoop that eluded the entire Chicago and national press corps. I got the exclusive, Dr. King said, because I persisted. He told only me what the world was waiting to hear: that he came to Chicago to fight segregated housing and challenge the power of Mayor Richard Daley. After giving me the big news, he told me he expected great things from me. The photo is the most treasured in my collection. Happy Dr. King Day and thank you, sir.”

In a longer version of this encounter in her 2010 memoir, “NewsLady,” Simpson adds, “With an exclusive on one of the biggest stories in the nation, I was now a force to be reckoned with inside Chicago’s prestigious journalism corps. Without my scoop it may have taken much longer to attract the attention of the Chicago media.”

(From Facebook)

CBS News Picks Galloway to Head Streaming

“CBS News is placing new emphasis on streaming video, luring an executive from The Wall Street Journal to oversee the broadband news venture once known as CBSN,” Brian Steinberg reported Tuesday for Variety.

“The ViacomCBS unit hired Anthony Galloway (pictured), who had been overseeing a range of audio and video initiatives at the News Corp.-backed broadsheet, as its new senior vice president of streaming. Galloway, who will report to Neeraj Khemlani, co-president of a unit that comprises CBS News and local stations, is expected to oversee day-to-day programming and production for CBS News’ streaming service. He starts his new role Feb. 14.”

Tony Maglio added Tuesday for The Wrap: “Galloway had recently been the chief content officer of editorial video, audio and voice programming at the Wall Street Journal. That position followed a three-year run as the Wall Street Journal’s global head of video and audio.

“Galloway previously held senior positions at Condé Nast and Vice Media, following his 15 years at NBC News. . . .”

Alex M. Rivera Jr. and Vice President Richard M. Nixon at ceremonies marking the independence of Ghana in March 1957. It was a 22-day goodwill trip to eight African countries, Rome and Paris. (Credit: Alex M. Rivera, Jr. Collection, Dr. James E. Shepard Memorial Library Archives, Records and History Center, North Carolina Central University.)

‘Printing Hate’ Pivots to Black Press

“Alexander M. Rivera (pictured), a Black reporter and photographer for The Pittsburgh Courier, was on assignment to cover ‘the trial of the century’ as he and others described it to readers, a trial that could mark a turning point in the legacy of lynching in the South,” Airielle Lowe reported Monday for the Howard Center For Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland.

It was part of the student-written “Printing Hate” series, “a thorough exploration of the racist pasts of newspapers,” as well as the responses from the Black press.

“This work is a collaboration of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and Capital News Service at the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Morehouse College, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and the University of Arkansas.”

The story continued, “The Courier was read each week by hundreds of thousands of people around the nation, the largest circulation of any publication of the Black press at the time.

“It was May 1947, and the mantra of some white politicians in formerly Confederate states was that a new South had emerged, that the old days had gone with the wind. Many espoused that the legal, cultural and economic face of the region was no longer the mug of the Jim Crow past.

“But what Rivera would come to understand was that his press credentials, his experience as a naval intelligence officer, his studies at Howard University and his upbringing as a member of a middle-class North Carolina family wouldn’t matter.

“Professionally, he was ‘A.M. Rivera Jr., Staff Correspondent.’ But in Greenville, South Carolina at that time, he was just another Black man. . . .”

Short Takes

Long Vue, center, collaborates with Claire Holzschuh, left, a public health educator with the Menasha, Wis., Health Department, and Susana Guerra, right, a volunteer with Casa Hispana, to assist residents registering at the Free COVID-19 Vaccine Clinic at the Elisha D. Smith Public Library in Menasha. (Credit: Dan Powers/USA Today Network-Wisconsin)
“The Global Media Index, which will track and measure the way Africa is covered by top global media outlets has been developed by, the University of Cape Town (UCT), Media Monitoring Africa, Africa No Filter and the Africa Center,,” Mandisa Rasmeni wrote Tuesday for the Economist in Namibia. “The Global Media Index will put 20 leading global media platforms under the microscope to analyse how they tell Africa’s stories, whose voices are being heard, which topics are prioritised and how they are covered. The Global Media Index will also highlight best practices in reporting on the continent. . . .”
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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms+owner@groups.io

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