Maynard Institute archives

Tom Joyner Wins Pardon for Ancestors

by richard0521

Bryan Monroe to Teach at Medill School

NYU Students Undertake Multimedia Project on Navajo

Tom Joyner learns of his ancestors from Henry Louis Gates Jr. in "African American Lives II."

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Traced Radio Host’s Family Tree

Syndicated radio host Tom Joyner won a posthumous pardon Wednesday morning for two great-uncles who were wrongfully executed in 1915 in the death of a 73-year-old Confederate veteran, Joyner announced on the air from Columbia, S.C.

Gates said after the pardon was won, 'We can change the way black history is going to be remembered.' "We got it! We got it!" he said.

The South Carolina Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to grant the pardon to Thomas and Meeks Griffin. It is thought to be the first post-conviction pardon in the state for someone sentenced to death, Roddie Burris wrote for the State in Columbia, S.C.

Joyner had been on a quest to clear his uncles’ names since he learned their story from Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as part of Gates’ PBS special, ‘African American Lives II,’ which aired in February 2008. In the special, Gates announced the results of genealogy research conducted on several celebrities, among them Tina Turner, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock and Joyner. Joyner’s included the story of Thomas and Meeks Griffith.¬†

Gates was with Joyner’s family and members of their legal team in Columbia, where Joyner went before the parole and pardon board.

"We can’t change black history, but we can change the way black history is going to be remembered," Gates told Joyner’s radio audience.

"The host of ‘The Tom Joyner Morning Show’ called in to the program to inform co-hosts Sybil Wilkes and J. Anthony Brown, along with his listening audience, who’d been texting their well-wishes all morning," according to a statement from the program.

"Black people back in the day didn’t always talk about the struggles from which they came, they always looked forward,’ Joyner said, according to the story in the State. ‘I hope this will bring closure and that the secrets of my family will be closed.’

The Joyner show statement continued:

"Joyner, with help from Gates and South Carolina attorney Stephen K. Benjamin, put together the case petitioning the state to exonerate his uncles.

"The brothers were executed with two other black men for the April 1913 shooting death of John Lewis, 73, a wealthy Confederate veteran living in a town 40 miles north of Columbia.

"The Griffin brothers were indicted in July 1913 and given just two days to prepare the case. The family was forced to sell 130 acres of land to finance the defense. Their lawyer sought a delay but the request was denied, leaving just one day to get ready. Later, the state Supreme Court said the denial was insignificant to the outcome of the case.

”White people petitioned the governor to exonerate them,’ Gates said, but to no avail.

"The men were framed by a black man who may well have committed the crime himself, Gates said, adding that the man later said he did it because he knew the Griffin family was wealthy enough to hire a lawyer.

”I don’t care if you had Thurgood Marshall defending you; nobody could prepare for a murder trial in a day,’ Joyner said in an interview last week with BlackAmericaWeb.com," a Joyner Web site.

"After the Griffin brothers died in the electric chair on Sept. 29, 1915, Joyner’s grandmother was hurriedly moved to Florida, where the family believed their history began – at least until the genealogical study. His grandmother, Joyner said, never told the story of what happened to her brothers, and his father never knew what happened to his uncles until Gates presented the research.

”And people don’t like to talk. There are not a lot of records that we can dig up. Had the genealogical study not been done, we wouldn’t have the story,’ Joyner said. ‘ I’m sure they are not the only African-Americans who have been framed, and their stories will never be told, and they’ll never be cleared.”

Limbaugh Out as Potential St. Louis Rams Owner

"If conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh ever had much of a chance to be a minority owner in a successful bid to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams, it is now over, two league sources have confirmed to SI.com," Don Banks reported for SI.com.

Rush Limbaugh's participation in buying the St. Louis Rams would have doomed his group's effort, St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts said."In a statement released Wednesday evening by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts ‚Äî who is heading the group that hopes to buy the Rams ‚Äî he announced Limbaugh’s official exit from the bid. It is believed that Limbaugh’s controversial participation would have doomed the group’s effort in the eyes of NFL owners. League sources told SI.com that Limbaugh’s candidacy in any Rams bid had ‘zero chance’ of being approved by the league’s owners. In his statement, Checketts said Limbaugh’s participation had become ‘a complication and a distraction’ to the group’s efforts.

"According to league sources, Limbaugh comes with too much troubling baggage in terms of his outspoken views that often intersect the divisive issues of politics and race in America. In a time when the NFL is hoping to have complete uniformity among its team owners in anticipation of the tough collective bargaining negotiations to come with the players union, there was little interest within the league to associate with an owner who is paid to give his highly charged opinions on the radio for hours each week."

Second Group Seeking to Acquire Ebony, Jet

Ebony's November issue.A second group, this one headed by Connecticut businessmen and brothers Kenton and Peter Clarke, says it wants to acquire Ebony and Jet magazines.

"Kenton Clarke, CEO of DiversityBusiness, said Ebony and Jet are strong brands that have greater potential for growth if changes are made to adjust to changes in demographic groups and markets," Denise Stewart reported Monday for BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Clarke told Journal-isms on Wednesday, however, that the company has not returned his phone calls.

"To me, Ebony the brand is as American as baseball and apple pie," he said. "But it is underutilized, not focused." It should be reaching "everyone who is capable of reading it, from 3 or 4 years up to 99." It also has a marketing problem, he said. The publications have been doing good work, but "they didn’t tell anybody." Clarke also said he was surprised Johnson Publishing Co. did not plan for two or three lean years, such as it is now experiencing.

"Maybe they’re on cruise control," he said.

Clarke started DiversityBusiness in 1980, he said. His brother, Peter Clarke, owns a number of businesses, including Advanced Cleaning Concept, a Connecticut-based maintenance firm.

As reported last week, Sidmel Estes, a longtime television executive producer and the founder and CEO of Breakthrough Inc., a media consulting company, says her Atlanta-based firm is working to assemble a group of investors “who want to see the next generation of Ebony.” Joining Estes, a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, are Neil Foote, who leads the National Association of Multicultural Media Executives, and Willie Chriesman, a former broadcast news manager.

Meanwhile, Lerone Bennett Jr. confirmed that he had resigned as executive editor emeritus of Ebony because of the way his daughter, senior editor Joy T. Bennett, left the magazine in August. "I resigned as executive editor emeritus effective immediately because of the mishandling of the case and the lack of criteria and perspective and a sense of history in dealing with the case," he told Journal-isms on Monday.

Lerone Bennett had worked for Johnson Publishing Co. for 52 years, including as Ebony’s executive editor.

 

Bryan Monroe to Teach at Medill School

Bryan Monroe, the former Knight Ridder executive who resigned in April as editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines, has joined the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University as a visiting professor, the school announced on Tuesday.

A visiting professor is "a distinguished professional who joins the school for lesser or greater amounts of time to share the experiences, lessons and perspectives of the real world. Bryan will be teaching full-time," Mary Nesbitt, Medill’s dean of curriculum, told Journal-isms. Neither Nesbitt nor Monroe would disclose the length of the contract.

Monroe was assistant vice president/News at Knight Ridder when the company went out of business in 2006. Since Monroe left Johnson Publishing Co., he has been a contributor to CNN, commenting on the death of Michael Jackson, whom he interviewed for Ebony’s December 2007 issue. Monroe was president of the National Association of Black Journalists from 2005 to 2007.

Joanna Hernandez was named to the Unity board. (Credit: Aisha Al-Muslim)

Ciara Named Unity President as Olmeda Steps Down

Barbara Ciara, immediate past president of the National Association of Black Journalists, was elected president of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc., to complete the term vacated by Rafael Olmeda, who resigned as Unity president this past week, Unity announced on Monday.

Joanna Hernandez, member of the Craft of Journalism faculty at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, was elected by the Unity board as vice president.

"As president I will continue UNITY’s goal to save, keep and create new jobs in journalism," Ciara said. "As alliance partners we have a voice in the chorus that cannot be ignored."

Olmeda, a former president of NAHJ, said on his blog that he stepped down "for the most transparent of personal reasons: to concentrate on my job and my family." He writes a parenting column and covers breaking news at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Blacks Oppose Civil Unions, Pew Study Says

Blacks are much more likely to think that homosexuality is morally wrong (64 percent) than whites (48 percent) or Hispanics (43 percent), according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

And while support for civil unions stands at an all-time high in Pew Research Center surveys — with 57 percent favoring them and 37 percent opposed to allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements with each other — blacks stand with conservative Republicans, white evangelicals and those who attend church weekly in opposition. Among whites, the figures were 61 percent in favor and 34 percent opposed; among blacks, 40 percent in favor and 52 percent opposed. Among Hispanics, it was 49 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed.

"Attitudes on same-sex marriage currently stand almost exactly where they did 12 months ago, with just over half of Americans (53%) opposed and 39% in favor of allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally," the Pew organization said.

Meanwhile, Michael R. Triplett analyzed coverage of the gay rights National Equality March in Washington last weekend for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

He concluded that the Washington Post gave the march the best play of any newspaper in the country.

"Relying on the Newseum’s Today’s Front Page website that features the front pages of newspapers around the world, it’s clear the march got very little page-one play. A march story made the front page of the Chicago Tribune and the Denver Post, which ran the New York Times story.

"In California, neither the LA Times or San Diego Union Tribune mentioned the march at all on the front page. The Orange County Register had [a] teaser to a page 12 story, the San Francisco Chronicle teased a lead story in the metro section. In Florida, the Sun-Sentinel had no mention of the march on the front page, while the Miami Herald teased a page 3 story at the top of the paper and the St. Pete Times had a brief to inside story."

 


At Navajo Nation: "For years, Roger lived in this shack made from old locker doors. He was waiting for housing materials (paid for by the federal government) to be delivered. Only one shipment of trusses ever came, largely due to corruption, mismanagement and institutional racism. He eventually moved to a ‘better’ home where he died of exposure this January. He was 72." (Credit: Darragh Worland)

NYU Students Undertake Multimedia Project on Navajo

Yvonne Latty is back at New York University after taking seven graduate students from her "Reporting New York" and "Reporting the Nation" graduate concentrations to the Southwest to report on the Navajo Nation. They are producing a multimedia reporting project on uranium contamination and the housing issues that have "hurt the Navajo people," she said.

Yvonne Latty "it was amazing, sad, breathtaking, intense, scary . . . my students were moved. listening to parents who lost six kids to uranium contamination, visiting homes, that are so poor who can believe this is america . . ." she wrote Wednesday via e-mail.

"i want to go back . . ."

"I went there to interview a vet for my book ‘In Conflict’ four years ago," Latty wrote Journal-isms last Thursday, "and I was so very moved by the beauty, the despair and the strength of the people. I had this overwhelming feeling of just wishing I could do something. I made a vow to myself that I would go back. Since then one of my students, Nicole Tung, won the New York Photographers Association Award and a Hearts Award for an independent study she did with me on Navajo vets.

"I am going back because I want to show my students how important it is to tell the stories of the underserved. I want to give them an experience they will never, ever forget and will mold them as journalists. This is the first of yearly reporting trips I plan to take with students in my grad program to underserved communities around the country. The results of our work will be on our grad website and you can follow us as our adventure begins tomorrow on twitter. I am excited, nervous, anxious and really proud of my students and my school, NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, for allowing me to do this.

"Right now Navajo Nation has a multitude of issues unfolding, many having to do with the proposed building of a new mine and well as pressing health issues of many who have exposed to uranium contamination and are sick. Housing is also a very big issue. [President] Obama recently lifted a ban on new development there, which the law’s mere [existence] is hard to grasp. Many navajo have no water or electricity . . . it does not feel like America there. They are in so many ways forgotten people."

"Good Hair" Debuts at No. 14 at Box Office

The Chris Rock-produced documentary "Good Hair" performed well at its 10-city opening, Variety reports, taking in $1.1 million at 186 locations, averaging $6,006 per screen. "Rock went on an aggressive tour of daytime skeins including ‘Oprah’ and ‘The View,’" the publication said.

The top movie was "Couple’s Retreat," which took in $11,429 per screen; followed by "Zombieland," at $4,872 per screen. "Good Hair," about many African American women’s obsession with straight hair, was No. 14.

Short Takes

  • Washington Post Style section writer Wil Haygood planned to spend Wednesday with the Italian-American Civic Association in Watertown, N.Y., where in 1939 a sportswriter for the Watertown Daily Times gave the subject of Haygood’s latest biography, the graceful and iconic boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, his nickname. Haygood’s "Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson" was published by Knopf on Tuesday. On the whole, Haygood said at Washington’s Politics and Prose bookstore, Robinson "did not like sportswriters at all. He had no friends in the media. The sportswriters thought he was uppity and arrogant. I think that was a shame."
  • Karla Garrett HarshawAfter nearly 40 years spent pursuing a career in journalism, 16 of them as editor of the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, Karla Garrett Harshaw plans to retire from Cox Ohio Publishing, Tom Stafford wrote Monday for the News-Sun. Harshaw, 54, was the first woman of color to serve as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Vice president of community development for Cox Ohio Publishing since 2006, Harshaw has spent most of 2009 as an executive on loan to Wilberforce University, helping to reestablish a development department there, Stafford wrote.
  • "Don Imus‚Äô return to the cable news airwaves after a stint on RFD-TV immediately boosted the ratings of his new home Fox Business Network, according to ratings data acquired by B&C," Alex Weprin wrote Tuesday for Broadcasting & Cable. "A spokesperson for FBN would neither confirm nor deny the numbers, as the network is not publicly rated by Nielsen."
  • "Nan Robertson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times who was widely known for her book ‘The Girls in the Balcony,’ which chronicled the fight for workplace parity by female employees of The Times, and for writing candidly about her alcoholism and battle with toxic shock syndrome, died on Tuesday in Rockville, Md. She was 83 and lived in Bethesda, Md., Margalit Fox reported Wednesday for the New York Times.
  • "Updating its numbers from a few months ago, Mediafinder.com, an online database of American and Canadian periodicals, reports that more than 100 magazines have folded in the past three months, bringing the total number of pubs tracked by Mediafinder that have been shuttered this year to 383," Amanda Ernst wrote Tuesday for MediaBistro.¬†
  • "The Obama administration today released the first edition of White House Wire, a special newsletter aimed at the black community," Dayo Olopade wrote for theRoot.com. "Aggregating recent news such as UN Ambassador Susan Rice‚Äôs speech at Howard University Law School, Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan‚Äôs trip to Chicago to address youth violence, the naming of a U.S. Navy ship for Medgar Evers and the nomination of a black woman as a judge for the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the new publication is another part of the White House tool to direct messaging about its policy agenda."
  • In Chicago, "WLS-Ch. 7 morning news anchor Judy Hsu did not name her baby Ike, despite a paramedic’s suggestion," Daarel Burnette II wrote Wednesday in the Chicago Tribune. "The baby, Alexander James, was born early Tuesday on the side of Eisenhower Expressway after her husband pulled over their car en route to the hospital because she was so far along in labor."
  • White model Lara Stone, in blackface for French Vogue. (Credit: Steven Klein/French Vogue)"French Vogue has gotten into some more haute controversy," Nicole Carter wrote Tuesday for the New York Daily News. "This month’s issue of the fashion magazine features a photoshoot with white supermodel Lara Stone in blackface, according to Jezebel.com.
  • "Virginia prison officials have unconstitutionally restricted inmates from receiving a magazine that reports on prisoner rights and criminal-justice issues, the publication claims in a lawsuit filed on Oct. 9," the Associated Press reported on Monday. "Prison Legal News filed the lawsuit against Gene M. Johnson, director of the state Department of Corrections, and other prison officials and employees in federal court in Charlottesville."
  • Nicole A. Childers, executive producer of National Public Radio’s "News & Notes," canceled this year, on Tuesday was named chief content officer for the new L.A. Public Media Service of Radio Biling?ºe, a California-based Latino public media network. "The English-language service will be aimed toward a young, diverse and underserved audience in Los Angeles with an initial focus on the largest demographic group, Latinos. Childers will spearhead a team developing and testing multimedia content that resonates with this audience under a major grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," the network said.
  • Nekesa Mumbi Moody and Malik Raymond Singleton were married Friday Nekesa Mumbi Moody and Malik Raymond Singleton were married Friday. (Credit: David Williams) evening at Terrace on the Park in Flushing Meadows, Queens, according to Vincent M. Mallozzi, writing Sunday in the New York Times. The couple met in October 2007 while volunteering as instructors for the New York Association of Black Journalists annual high school workshop. The bridegroom, 36, manages the Web site www.elmuseo.org for El Museo del Barrio, a museum in Manhattan. The bride, 38, is the music editor for the Associated Press in Manhattan and is now the workshop‚Äôs director.
  • Norma Quarles, a broadcast pioneer who spent more than two decades with NBC, is glad to see greater diversity on the airwaves, according to Alissa Krinsky, writing Wednesday for MediaBistro. "I think it’s wonderful. I’m seeing more people ‚Äî not just black and women ‚Äî but I’m seeing people of all ethnicities on TV. And I’m delighted to see it," said Quarles, now 72.
  • "Keith Garvin, a veteran TV newsman who has spent the last three years at NBC-owned WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., will be the new co-anchor of TXA21’s First in Prime 7 to 9 p.m. newscasts," Ed Bark wrote Monday on his Dallas-based blog.
  • "The body of radio presenter Fabi?°n Ram??rez L??pez who worked for regional radio La Magia 97.1 was found dead close to Mazatl?°n, Sinaloa, north-western Mexico, 48 hours after he went missing after leaving his home to go to work," Reporters Without Borders reported on Tuesday. ‚ÄúThe motive for this murder remains to be established, but if the evidence does link it to his work it would make Ram??rez the tenth media worker to be killed in Mexico since the start of the year,‚Äù Reporters Without Borders said.

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