Civil Rights-Era Journalists to Mark Brown v. Board
“Some of the most prominent journalists of the civil rights era will gather at Syracuse University?s ?Defining US: Civil Rights and the Press? symposium on April 24-25 to reflect on their historic coverage and on two landmark civil rights anniversaries,” Charlotte Grimes, Knight Chair in Political Reporting at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and coordinator of the symposium, announces in a news release.
“The two-day event will mark the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court?s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which forbade public school segregation; and the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations,” it continues.
“A highlight of the symposium will be the keynote address by Hodding Carter III, president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Carter grew up with his family newspaper?s tradition of challenging intolerance and championing civil rights; His father, Hodding Carter Jr., won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for editorials on racial tolerance.”
“The other journalists include:
- ” Earl Caldwell, the first African American national correspondent for The New York Times and the only reporter with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when King was assassinated;
- “Paul Delaney, a 23-year journalist who began covering civil rights for the Atlanta Daily World. Delaney was one of the first African American editors with The New York Times and the first African American director of the journalism program at the University of Alabama;
- “Karl Fleming, the Newsweek correspondent who covered most of the major news events in the South during the civil rights movement;
- “Phyllis Garland, long-time journalist with the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading African American newspaper that was an early leader in civil rights coverage;
- “Dorothy Butler Gilliam, a recently retired journalist for The Washington Post who, as a young reporter for the Defender in Memphis, covered the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School;
- “John Herbers, who covered the origins of the civil rights movement in the South, the murder trial of Emmett Till, and, for the New York Times, the expansion of the protests and demonstrations under the Rev. King?s leadership;
- “Vernon Jarrett, who covered civil rights in the North for the Chicago Defender. He produced the first daily radio newscast by African Americans, and became the first African American syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune;
- “Ray Jenkins, who was one of two reporters to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for coverage of the Phenix City, Ala., uprisings and covered George Wallace?s resistance to civil rights in Alabama;
- “Haynes Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winner for his coverage of the Selma, Ala., marches. Johnson is one of The Washington Post?s most distinguished reporters and is now the Knight Chair in public affairs journalism at the University of Maryland;
- “Herb Kaplow, whose civil rights coverage started with reporting the Supreme Court decision in the Brown case and who, as an NBC journalist, was attacked while covering the Freedom Riders in Birmingham, Ala.;
- “Charles Moore, a contract photographer for Life and The Associated Press. He was the only photographer to capture the Rev. King being arrested in Montgomery, Ala., at the beginning of the movement;
- “Jack Nelson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the civil rights movement for the Los Angeles Times;
- “ Moses Newson, a veteran journalist whose coverage for the Baltimore Afro-American included the Emmett Till murder trial and school desegregations across the South. He was one of only two journalists on the Freedom Ride bus that was firebombed in Anniston, Ala., in 1961;
- “Gene Patterson, whose editorials in the Atlanta Constitution won him the 1967 Pulitzer Prize, a reputation as a voice of conscience in the South and death threats from white segregationists;
- “Gene Roberts, who covered the South and civil rights for The New York Times and became one of the nation?s most respected editors as the Philadelphia Inquirer won 17 Pulitzers under his leadership;
- “John Seigenthaler, a 43-year veteran reporter, editor and publisher of the Nashville Tennessean, and founding editor of USA Today and the First Amendment Center. He was chief negotiator for the Department of Justice on behalf of the freedom riders in Alabama, where he was attacked by a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen;
- “Claude Sitton, the pre-eminent civil rights reporter for The New York Times. He covered the sit-in movements, school desegregation in South Carolina and Alabama, and the assassination of Medgar Evers, then won the 1983 Pulitzer prize for commentary;
- “Richard Valeriani, a 31-year veteran journalist for NBC News and The Associated Press who was hospitalized after being clubbed by a white segregationist in Marion, Ala.;
- “Ernest C. Withers, a pre-eminent photojournalist of the African American press who was on the scene of the Rev. King?s assassination and who was inducted into the Black Press Hall of Fame in 1988.”
Speaking of “Brown,” a Reminder on Language
Speaking of Brown v. Board, Keith M. Woods of the Poynter Institute offers a useful reminder to get right the use of such terms as desegregation, re-segregation and integration.
“When language slips from the moorings of context, history is set adrift,” he writes. “We forget where we’ve been, how we got here and where we were trying to go. Stories get distorted and conflated so that the simple goal of the Brown decision ?- outlawing state-sanctioned racism in public schools -? gets folded into every spin-off movement meant to fix the damage bigotry has done to the education of black children in particular and to race relations in general. Desegregation becomes busing, which becomes integration, which becomes diversity.
“So 50 years later, we find journalists describing the history-altering decision to rout ‘separate but equal’ from the American lexicon by using the word diversity. The ‘Brown’ ruling was not about diversity, that feel-good ideal of racial utopia. It was not about black children wanting to sit next to white children. It was about demanding that states honor the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and provide black children with equal protection under the law.
“Because the 1st Amendment makes journalism the only profession with Constitutional protection, journalists owe a special responsibility to the public to get this right. A nation that forgets the roots of its public school problems might squander years, even decades, trying to solve the wrong problems.”
Story of Illinois Town Wins Diversity Writing Award
S. Lynne Walker, Mexico City bureau chief for Copley News Service, has won the Freedom Forum/ASNE Award for Outstanding Writing on Diversity for a four-part series, “Beardstown / Reflection of a changing America,” an account of the changes in a town brought by an influx of immigrants, the American Society of Newspaper Editors announces.
The series was introduced this way by editor Barry Locher of the State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill.:
“For more than 200 years, the peoples of the world have been welcomed in America, a country built upon the backs of immigrants. In cities and in small towns, new waves of immigrants look to improve their lives and those of their families in the same land of hope, opportunity and prosperity sought by their forefathers.
“Here in central Illinois, the Illinois River community of Beardstown is no longer an enclave of mostly white residents. It has become a reflection of America’s continually changing face, an international community with a significant population of Hispanics – and a growing number of Africans – who have come to work for Excel Corp., the pork processing plant. A demographic change that is taking place across the country can be seen in microcosm in Beardstown.
“Off and on for the past seven months, reporter S. Lynne Walker of the Mexico City bureau of Copley News Service lived in Beardstown. Walker’s fluency in Spanish allowed her to understand a side of the immigrants’ story not widely heard in central Illinois. The work of Walker and photographer Kristen Schmid Schurter offers an intimate look at the clash and commingling of distinctly different cultures. Beginning today, we are pleased to present the first part of their four-day report examining one community’s 15-year adventure in social change.”
The ASNE judges said, “It is a slice of America also written about by others, yet in this case delivered in a compelling way that offers a deeper understanding.”
Philly Restaurateur’s Widow: Sticks and Stones . . .
As reported earlier this month, the Asian American Journalists Association weighed in on a controversy over the name of “Chink’s Steaks” restaurant in Philadelphia, so named in 1949 because its white owner, the late Samuel “Chink” Sherman, “had slanty eyes . . . and the kids started calling him ‘chink,'” according to his widow, Mildred Sherman, as quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News.
AAJA objected to a Daily News editorial on the subject, and the Daily News letters column has had no shortage of letters on the topic, most taking the restaurant’s side. The op-ed page also ran the AAJA letter.
Today, the paper ran a short piece, “Milly Sherman tells the real story of Chink’s:”
“I met my husband when I was 15 and never knew him as anything but ‘Chink,’ a nickname he acquired at the age of 7 because he had almond-shaped eyes. What right does this 21-year-old woman, or anyone else, have to dispute his name, which is even inscribed on his grave?” Sherman said of the woman who originally complained about the name.
“We sold food, not racism, and we employed people of every origin. My husband was the last person to care if someone was African-American, Asian, Italian, Irish or Jewish, because he had friends who were all of these. . .
“May I apologize for all the children who at age 7 in 1930 at James Blaine Elementary gave my husband his nickname. They didn’t realize they were hurting anyone.
“Remember, ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt you.'”
Plot Thickens on Ex-Columnist Losing College Job
The story about former columnist William H. Turner losing his bid to become president of Kentucky State University, where he had been interim president and the reported favorite for the job, has become more interesting.
“Some Kentucky State University employees believe interim president Bill Turner wasn’t chosen for a full term because of gender — he’s not a woman,” reported Melissa Arnold last week in Kentucky’s Frankfort State Journal.
“The vice president — Michelle Cruz-Williams — of the search firm KSU used to find candidates allegedly said during the process that ‘a woman will be the next president of KSU and not Bill Turner,’ the story reported.
On Sunday, Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Merlene Davis praised Clara Samuels, the whistle-blower who was among those who said she heard Cruz-Williams utter the remark.
“I can’t imagine a worse way for Sias to start a new job, especially at a university that needs to restore public trust,” wrote Davis, referring to Mary Evans Sias, who was chosen for the job.
“That’s not her fault, nor is it Samuels’.
“It’s just the reality that we all would face more often if people regularly followed their consciences.”
Turner had been a regular freelance columnist for the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina.
Sports Columnist Warns Barry Bonds Not to Clam Up
The Oakland Tribune’s Monte Poole writes that he was contracted by a magazine to interview National League MVP Barry Bonds and his godfather, Willie Mays, “to discuss, among other things, how each man felt about Barry being poised to surpass Mays’ career home run total.” Bonds tentatively agreed.
Then came the story that Bonds’ personal trainer, Greg Anderson, had become one of four men charged this month in an alleged steroid-distribution ring.
Poole’s interview was off, moving Poole to offer some public relations advice.
“While the obvious legal ramifications surely prompted Bonds’ attorneys to advise him to avoid any discussion relating to BALCO, to steroids or to indicted trainer Greg Anderson, Barry hurts only himself by taking this advice to the extreme.
“At a time when Bonds and baseball could benefit from a little positive attention, his decision to shun any and all media, on any and all topics, is the worst possible public relations move he can make.
“Unless, of course, Bonds actually has something to hide. If he does, utter silence is one way to prevent self-incrimination, and it is the only sure way to preclude going down the Pete Rose path of lying when cornered.”
Black Journalist Urges Solidarity With Natives
“Many African-Americans have shrugged at what many Native Americans considered an offensive, ill-advised, culturally insensitive performance,” writes Sabrina Miller, formerly of the Chicago Tribune, about the OutKast Grammy Award performance that Native Americans found offensive.
“I find it hypocritical that many of us don’t care. We think everyone should be sensitive to our indignation at racial and cultural slights. We are not always so gracious when it comes to acknowledging the cultural slights of others, particularly when we’ve taken part in perpetuating the injustice.
“It’s interesting, especially with Native Americans, because we, African-Americans, are so quick to claim Native heritage. We are so quick and so proud to credit that phantom Native ancestor for the undertones in our skin to the length and texture of our hair.”
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