Roots Revelation

Originally published Feb. 27, 2007

Paper Makes Hay With Sharpton-Thurmond Link

The revelation that the Rev. Al Sharpton’s ancestors were owned by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s forebears — a revelation that came after the New York Daily News arranged to have Sharpton’s ancestry traced — had an impact not only on Sharpton, but on the writer who broke the story, News reporter Austin Fenner.

In fact, Fenner, 43, had his own lineage investigated, but researchers did not get as far as they did with Sharpton. Fenner’s roots have been traced to his great-grandmother’s arrival at Ellis Island in 1911, on a boat that came from the West Indian islands of St. Thomas and St. Kitts.

“My guess is that her dad or granddad is white, and her mother and grandmother were black women,” Fenner said. But records in the Caribbean have not been digitized as were Sharpton’s, said Fenner, a general assignment reporter who has been at the News since 1994.

The News story exploded onto news wires and talk shows Sunday and Monday, pushed there by big headlines and prose that invested the revelations with capital-S significance.

“In a revelation that will stun the nation,” the first story began, “the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of America’s most powerful black leaders, has unearthed a shattering family secret — his ancestors were slaves owned by relatives of the late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond.

“It is an ironic twist of fate that inexorably links one of the most vocal civil rights activists and an icon of Deep South segregation.”

The story described how the researchers used slides to slowly unveil the truth before Sharpton’s eyes last week, giving him time to absorb each detail.

Sidebars Sunday and Monday added layers to the main account: “Strom’s kin stunned.” “Sharpton: I need to know the blood truth.” “White Sharptons of Florida recoil at slavery’s horrors.”

“It was probably the most shocking thing in my life,” Sharpton was quoted as saying. “I would hope that if anything, I can take the name that was given to me because my great-grandfather was property and make that name stand for freedom-fighting.”

“Sharpton broke the news Saturday night to his father, to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and to the daughters of late singer James Brown. Jackson and Brown were Sharpton’s mentors — and both grew up within 60 miles of where his great-grandfather was a slave,” one story said.

E.R. Shipp, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at the News, was not as impressed.

“Most Blacks in the US, myself included, can trace some part of their family tree to some White folks — and vice versa if Whites are so inclined,” Shipp wrote Sunday on her blog. “I do now have older White people considering me a ‘cousin’ or somehow in an-as- yet-to-be-defined way, kinfolk. . . . As I have said many times before, we are all mutts. A little dab of this, a little dab of that —and that makes us all the more American.”

Fenner said he hadn’t seen Shipp’s blog, but “the big deal is when you see it on paper and when you see the Daily News go into a graveyard and see these granite slabs with the names Sharpton and Thurmond resting together in perpetuity.” That and the other bits of information tear at one’s mind, he said. “When you see paper of how people bought you and owned you and you see [that] the law entrapped you . . . you see it on paper.”

Fenner said he was approached by public relations people at ancestry.com late last year, notifying him that they had collected 55 million bits of new data that would be uploaded onto their Web site. The information could be useful to African Americans, they told him.

Fenner at first said he was not interested, then thought that perhaps there was someone whose genealogy his New York readers might be interested in. He went to Augusta, Ga., at the end of December for the funeral of Brown, and contacted Sharpton about having his family tree examined.

Sharpton sent a message later saying, “Go for it.” As the researchers did their work, “I was amazed it was all coming to life,” Fenner told Journal-isms. “I also felt the whole pain in all of us. It reiterated what a lot of us learned in Afro- American studies in college that went in one ear and out the other,” such as the joy formerly enslaved people felt in being able to legally marry.

Fenner was working on more material for Tuesday’s paper. “My e-mail boxes just blew up,” he said of the response. “I have 15 text messages.” Readers have called to congratulate him or to express opinions for and against Sharpton.

As for Sharpton, Fenner and Adam Lisberg reported this on Sunday:

“‘Reeling from the news that his great-grandfather was once enslaved to the family of Strom Thurmond, the Rev. Al Sharpton said yesterday he wants a DNA test to learn whether he and the segregationist senator share a bloodline.

“‘I’ll do it,’ said Sharpton. ‘I can’t find out anything more shocking than I’ve already learned.'”

• Michele Norris, “All Things Considered,” National Public Radio: Sharpton-Strom Tie Shows the Power of Research

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AsianWeek Criticized for Running Anti-Black Column

A coalition of Asian American groups has criticized AsianWeek newspaper for publishing a column called “Why I Hate Blacks,” prompting the magazine to pull the column from its Web site and issue a statement that it “sincerely regrets any offense caused.”

The opinion piece by Kenneth Eng, a 23-year-old New York-based science fiction writer, begins:

“Here is a list of reasons why we should discriminate against blacks, starting from the most obvious down to the least obvious:

• “Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us. . . .
• “Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years. It is unbelievable that it took them that long to fight back. On the other hand, we slaughtered the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War . . .”

Editor-in-chief Samson Wong issued this statement and said the publication would “provide an update in its upcoming issue”:

“AsianWeek sincerely regrets any offense caused by the one opinion piece which reflected that author’s personal views. We apologize for any harm or hurt this has caused the African American community. AsianWeek has great respect for all that the African American community has done for Asian Pacific Americans.

“AsianWeek’s operation and editorial policy are based on a philosophy of diversity. This includes fighting to promote diversity of opinion in our own community and even to expose its disturbing warts. It also includes a proven record on promoting cross-cultural diversity and inter-racial interaction. AsianWeek as an organization is proud of its deep and unparalleled history of working with, interacting with, and building connections among all the diverse groups that make up America.”

“AsianWeek’s response to our concerns amounted to a brush off,” said Vincent Eng, deputy director of the Washington-based Asian American Justice Center, via e-mail. “For AsianWeek to print an article that uses hate speech is totally unacceptable and irresponsible, and we call on AsianWeek to take immediate action and terminate its relationship with Kenneth Eng, print an editorial debunking the column and setting the record straight, review their editorial policy and process, and hold those responsible accountable.”

The San Francisco Bay Area publication, which claims a circulation of 48,505, is run by the Fang family, which owned the San Francisco Examiner for three years after buying it from the Hearst Corp. in 2001.

“Asian Americans should recognize the debt we all owe African Americans who blazed the civil rights path we have walked on in our journey to equality,” said Dale Minami, president of the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans, in a news release urging readers to sign a petition of protest. The Asian American Journalists Association also criticized the publication of what it called “irresponsible journalism.”

An editor at DNA Press, which published Eng’s books, said of Eng, “I really like the book, (but) I don’t know if he’s upset or going through emotional problems. We are a little bit lost. He upset some other people, so it’s not selling well.” The editor said he did not want his name used, saying “once you get associated with Ken Eng, I don’t think the image is very nice.”

[On Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page story on the controversy, “Asian paper’s ‘I Hate Blacks’ column assailed.”]

• Kenneth Eng, AsianWeek: “Why I Hate Blacks”

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Rats! Camera, Web Spell Bad News for Taco Bell

In the 1960s, Rafael Garcia, an ardent Puerto Rican nationalist who grew up in New York, was shooting photos of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and James Brown on assignment for Time and other publications.

On Friday, he struck gold taking pictures of rats. Not just one or two rodents, but what was “like the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus of rats,” Garcia, 62, told Journal-isms.

Garcia, a videographer, was first on the scene on Friday morning at a KFC-Taco Bell restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village, where he saw 30 to 50 rats clambering over chairs, tables and children’s high chairs.

“I looked in the window and saw these rats and said, ‘Holy — ,'” said Garcia, “There were enough creatures in that room that they could have devoured a human being. They were hungry mothers. … It was a frenzy,” as Carl MacGowan and Matthew Nestel reported Saturday in Newsday.

Garcia works the overnight shift for his own company, Very Good Samaritan Productions, and has established a relationship with the New York television stations and the networks. That night he got a tip from the assignment desk at WNBC-TV, the NBC owned- and operated New York station. WNBC had the footage exclusively for the two hours before the “Today” show, then Garcia sold it to ABC, CNN, the Associated Press, Univision, Newsweek and the local cable channel NY1.

“It was a good day,” he told Journal-isms.

But not so good for Yum Brands, Taco Bell’s parent company, in today’s media age. “By the time Yum Brands put out a statement addressing the issue on its home page and media wires — 2:06 p.m. EST — the stomach-churning video had already raced over the internet and made it to numerous other TV stations,” Kate Macarthur wrote on Monday in Advertising Age.

Moreover, the company’s “response seems to indicate that Yum saw the crisis as local — a huge miscalculation,” the story said.

“By midday Friday, more than 1,000 blogs had cited or spread the story and footage, according to a Technorati search. A search on Google News for ‘rats and KFC’ yielded 443 stories and “rats and Taco Bell” some 600 stories posted on websites of publications from Wyoming to the U.K.”

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Secret “Black Oscars” Come to an End

“It was a memorable but not completely triumphant Oscar night for black actors as Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson won trophies but Eddie Murphy lost in an upset,” Jake Coyle reported for the Associated Press noted on Sunday night.

“As expected, Whitaker won best actor Sunday for his frightful yet charismatic performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Jennifer Hudson, a former ‘American Idol’ contestant, scored the best supporting actress award for her debut performance in the musical ‘Dreamgirls.’

On National Public Radio’s “News & Notes” on Friday, Newsweek entertainment correspondent Allison Samuels disclosed the existence of the “Black Oscars,” a celebration among black actors and other film-industry people that took place for 25 years out of eyeshot of the press, and which ended this year as African Americans decided they were no longer being overlooked for Academy Awards.

“I started going probably about seven or eight years ago, maybe even 10 years ago,” Samuels said on the show. “Someone just invited me once and, you know, it was like, okay, let me go. And I was just surprised because to have everyone in black Hollywood in this room and for the press not to know about it, the press is usually not invited.

“But anyway, I got in, and to realize that the press didn’t get wind of it for all those years was just amazing to me. But it was, you know, it’s always a fabulous sight.”

• Monroe Anderson, Chicago Sun-Times: A movie record that leaves you reeling
• John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable: Oscars Late Night Big Winners Get a Smaller Audience
• Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Black actors will make us proud at the Oscars
• Les Payne, Newsday: Great Scot! Oscar should be ‘Amin’s’

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Columnist Herbert Sees Clintons as Schemers

“If Bill and Hillary Clinton were the stars of a reality TV show, it would be a weekly series called ‘The Connivers,'” Bob Herbert wrote Monday in the New York Times. “The Clintons, the most powerful of power couples, are always scheming at something, and they’re good at it.

“Their latest project is to contrive ways to knock Barack Obama off his white horse and muddy him up a little. A lot, actually.

“Most of the analyses after last week’s dust-up over David Geffen’s comments to Maureen Dowd have focused on whether the Clintons succeeded in tarnishing the junior senator from Illinois. What I found interesting was that no one questioned whether the Clintons would be willing to get down in the muck and start flinging it around. That was a given.

“. . . In all the uproar over Mr. Geffen’s comments, hardly anyone has said they were wildly off the mark. There would be no Obama phenomenon if an awful lot of people weren’t fed up with just the sort of mean-spirited, take-no-prisoners politics that the Clintons and the Bush crowd represent. Senator Obama — at least for the time being — is an extremely attractive alternative.”

• Betty Bayé, Louisville Courier-Journal: What aren’t authentic are questions about Obama’s ‘blackness’
• Arnold Garcia, Austin American-Statesman: What are politicians really saying?
• Emil Guillermo, AsianWeek: Yellow Enough For You?
• Roland S. Martin, Creators Syndicate: Democratic Primary Changes Good News for America
• Sheryl McCarthy, Newsday: Purging pettiness from politics
• Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Obama’s better off not playing pulpit politics with S.C. pastor
• Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Has McCain put his soul up for sale?
• Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Clinton vs. Obama: An Oscar-worthy campaign drama
• Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Depends What the Meaning of ‘Mistake’ Is
• Ron Walters, NNPA News Service: Clinton, Obama, Edwards: Beyond Paralysis

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Ann Scales Taking Boston Globe Buyout

Ann Scales, the style editor of the Boston Globe who has spent 12 years at the paper, is taking a buyout and expects to leave journalism, she told Journal-isms on Monday.

Ann Scales

Globe Editor Martin Baron told staffers in January, “We are aiming for a reduction of 19 staff positions in Editorial, including 17 on the news side and two on the opinion pages. Some current openings also will be frozen. In addition, we anticipate achieving cost savings through newshole and other expense reductions.”

Scales, who has been in journalism for 23 years, including a stint as a Globe White House correspondent, said, “I just felt it was a good time for me and my life personally,” noting that some have chosen to pursue second careers after accepting buyouts. She said she would still be involved in communications, and maybe would do “community work.”

Scales’ departure would leave three African American supervisory editors at the paper. Paula Bouknight is assistant managing editor for hiring and development, Joe Williams is deputy Washington bureau chief and Gregory Lee Jr., senior assistant sports editor.

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Ana Menendez, Andrea Elliott Win ASNE Awards

Ana Menendez of the Miami Herald and Andrea Elliott of the New York Times were among the winners of the American Society of Newspaper Editors annual awards for distinguished writing and photography, announced on Monday.

Menendez won in the commentary/column Writing category “For columns about the Miami community, including how a local festival to celebrate Cuban history had grown into a marketing ploy.

Elliott won the Freedom Forum/ASNE Award for Distinguished Writing on Diversity “for a three-part series, ‘An Imam in America,’ penetrating the inner life of a mosque in Brooklyn and its dynamic imam.”