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Lerone Bennett, Ebony Editor, Historian, Dies

One of 20th Century’s Most Influential Journalists

N.Y. Times’ Conservative Hire Out in Half a Day

Ethiopian Journalist Freed After 7 Years in Prison

Sensitivity Training to Follow Advertiser Backlash

Trump’s Losing Effort to ‘Keep America White’

NAHJ to Meet With Editor Over Cartoon

Monica Richardson Gets Expanded Duties at AJC

Critics Weigh In on New Obama Portraits

Philadelphia Tribune Partners With NBC

Publisher Jake Oliver Replaced at Afro-American

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Lerone Bennett Jr. holds a resolution in his honor from the Mississippi State Senate in 2007. 'I'm 78 years old. I thought I would die before I saw this,' Bennett said. He is flanked by > Mississippi State Sens. David Jordan, left, and John Horhn, with Rep. Omaria Scott and Sen. Willie Simmons, center, and Sen. Hillman Frazier and Rep. Willie Perkins in the rear.
Lerone Bennett Jr. holds a resolution in his honor from the State Senate in his home state of Mississippi in 2007. “I’m 78 years old. I thought I would die before I saw this,” Bennett said. He is flanked by State Sens. David Jordan, left, and John Horhn, with Rep. Omeria Scott and Sen. Willie Simmons, center, and Sen. Hillman Frazier and Rep. Willie Perkins in the rear.  (Credit: Mississippi State Senate)

One of 20th Century’s Most Influential Journalists

Lerone Bennett Jr., executive editor of Ebony magazine, where he worked for 52 years, and arguably the 20th century’s foremost African American “people’s historian,” died peacefully as he slept Wednesday in his Chicago home, a daughter, Joy Bennett, told Journal-isms.

Bennett was 89 and died of advanced vascular dementia, she said.

He has authored books and short stories examining the history of Blacks in the United States — as well as Chicago — and their struggle for equality,” Cheryl Pearson-McNeil wrote in 2010 for the Chicago Defender. She was describing Bennett’s participation in a documentary about the story of black people in Chicago, where he lived for 35 years.

“His 1963 seminal work, Before the MayFlower, traces Black history from its origins in Western Africa through the trans-Atlantic sojourn that would be slavery, the Reconstruction, and the upheavals of the Civil Rights Movement,” Pearson-McNeil continued. A 2008 exhibit about Bennett at Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History called him “the people’s historian.”

Bennett
Bennett

Joy Bennett noted the significance of the timing of her father’s passing. “Dad would die on Valentine’s Day in  the heart of Black History Month. He even went out as a historian,” she said by telephone.

Black History Month began as Negro History Week, commemorating Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Feb. 12, and Feb. 14, which Frederick Douglass celebrated as his day of birth.

One of Bennett’s most controversial books cast Lincoln in less than a glowing light.

“The real Lincoln, the author says, was a conservative politician who said repeatedly that he believed in White supremacy,” according to the dust jacket of “Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream,” published in 2000.

“Not only that: He opposed the basic principle of the Emancipation Proclamation until his death and was literally forced — Count Adam Gurowski said he was literally whipped —into the glory of having issued the Emancipation Proclamation,” which Lincoln drafted in such a way that it did not in and of itself free a single slave.”

“Forced into Glory” won the 2002 American Book Award.

Bennett also co-wrote 1989’s “Succeeding Against the Odds: The Inspiring Autobiography of One of America’s Wealthiest Entrepreneurs,” the story of John H. Johnson, co-founder of Johnson Publishing Co., publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines.

“We helped create the foundations of this [African American] struggle in the forties and fifties when the ground was hard and there were few laborers,” Johnson wrote in the book. “. . . we anticipated the changes and gave focus and form to them. In 1959, for example, I detected a growing interest in Black history and authorized a pathfinding Black history series. The response was so enthusiastic that we published a book, Lerone Bennett’s Before the Mayflower, which became one of the most widely read Black History books ever. This marked the beginning of the Johnson Publishing Company Book Division. . . .”

Despite Bennett’s passion for writing history for the average person, he wanted journalists to be generalists. “I’ve always believed that you write history one day and you write entertainment the next,” he said in “Writing for a Black Publication,” (video) a 2010 interview with the Visionary Project.

Thus, his Ebony would feature such purported people-pleasers as “Is It True What They Say About Twins?”

Bennett’s association with Ebony, which he helped make the nation’s leading African American publication, ended in 2009 when the publication forced his daughter Joy from the editorial staff. Her father demanded that his name be removed from the masthead, where Bennett was listed as executive editor emeritus. The magazine complied, adding that “his wise counsel will always be appreciated.”

Bennett was born in Clarksdale, Miss., and grew up in Jackson. One of his proudest moments came in 2007, when he was honored by the Mississippi State Senate. He said he never thought he’d live long enough to see a black man so welcome in the state Capitol.

” ‘I’m 78 years old. I thought I would die before I saw this,’ Bennett said. ‘Thank you for making it possible for me to see the great dream that could be realized in this state,’ “ Holbrook Mohr reported then for the Associated Press.

According to a 2002 profile by the HistoryMakers, “Bennett attended Morehouse College, earning a B.A. in 1949. He has always considered Morehouse as the center of his academic development. After graduating, Bennett formally entered the world of journalism as a reporter for the now defunct Atlanta Daily World. He became the city editor for the magazine and worked there until 1953, when he began his work as an associate editor at Jet magazine in Chicago, Illinois. In 1954, Bennett became an associate editor at Ebony and he was promoted to senior editor of the magazine in 1958. Since then, his comprehensive articles have become one of the magazine’s literary hallmarks.” He retired in 2005.

At Morehouse, Bennett was a classmate of Martin Luther King Jr., Mohr wrote.

Mohr’s story also said, “In 2006 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“In February, Bennett’s footprints and those of 12 others were added to the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame near the Atlanta church where King preached. The walk, established in 2004, now includes 50 pairs of footprints, marked in granite, from people who organizers call the ‘foot-soldiers’ of the civil rights movement.

“Former President Bill Clinton appointed Bennett to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. President George W. Bush appointed him to the Presidential Commission to study the proposed National Museum of African-American History and Culture, according to the Senate resolution passed in his honor.” He was too ill to attend the museum’s 2016 opening, Joy Bennett said, but he watched it on television.

“Though Bennett was born in Clarksdale, he moved with his family to Jackson at an early age where he was greatly influenced by teachers at Lanier High School,” the story continued.

” ‘I’m indebted first to the black teachers of Mississippi, who literally saved my life,’ he said. ‘The great black school teachers in Clarksdale and Jackson told me I could dream and do anything.’ ”

Bennett is survived by three daughters, Courtney and Constance Bennett of San Diego, Calif., and Alma Joy of Chicago. Their brother, Lerone Bennett III, died in 2013; their mother, former Johnson Publishing Co. journalist Gloria Sylvester, in 2009. He also leaves three granddaughters. Arrangements are being handled by the A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home in Chicago, which is historic in its own right.

It cared for the mutilated body of Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager who was abducted and killed in Mississippi in 1955.

N.Y. Times’ Conservative Hire Out in Half a Day

The latest addition to the New York Times’ editorial board lasted less than half a day, departing the job over previous social media postings in which she used offensive language and admitted she was friends with neo-Nazis, while saying she did not agree with them,” Tom Kludt reported Tuesday for CNN Money.

“At around midday Tuesday, the Times announced it had hired Quinn Norton, who most recently worked at Wired, to serve as its ‘lead opinion writer on the power, culture and consequences of technology.’

“By 9 p.m. the same day, Norton said on Twitter that she would no longer be working with the Times, the culmination of several hours of intense criticism directed at her over some of her previous writings on the site. . . .”

Separately, “Bari Weiss, an op-ed writer for The New York Times, triggered an intense online debate on Monday when she tweeted about Mirai Nagasu’s historic Olympic performance,” Doha Madani reported Monday for HuffPost.

“Weiss captioned a video from the NBC Olympics account ‘Immigrants: they get the job done,’ after Nagasu became the the first American woman to land a triple axel in Olympic competition.

“The problem is that Nagasu isn’t an immigrant. She was born in California to Japanese immigrants and maintained dual U.S. and Japanese citizenship until she was 22 years old.

“Many people criticized Weiss’ now-deleted tweet for ‘othering’ Nagasu — implying that because she is not white, she is an immigrant.

“Weiss pushed back, saying she’d used poetic license in quoting the line from the wildly popular Broadway show ‘Hamilton.’ . . .”

Ashley Feinberg added Wednesday for HuffPost, “On Monday night, the fury over [Editorial Page Editor James] Bennet’s op-ed page and its contempt for readers coalesced around something Weiss tweeted (and later deleted).

“Criticism flew in from all points of the compass — including from within the Times itself, where staffers were unusually frank in expressing their anger at both Weiss and the newspaper, according to an internal chatroom transcript obtained by HuffPost. . . .”

Ethiopian Journalist Freed After 7 Years in Prison

Eskinder Nega
Eskinder Nega

Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega “has finally been released from a prison facility after seven years in jail, a top Oromo activist has said,” Africa News reported on Wednesday. The  Oromo Federalist Congress is an opposition party.

“His release comes barely a week after [he] reportedly refused to sign a ‘false confession form’ in exchange for his liberty.

“Eskinder, who has been in jail since 2001, convicted of having links with banned groups, was among the over 740 prisoners who were set for release by the federal government as part of political reforms announced in January 2018. . . .”

Alison Bethel McKenzie, a veteran journalist, media trainer and former press-freedom group executive, messaged Journal-isms that she was “ecstatic” to learn of the release of Nega and Woubshet Taye. “It has been a long time in coming,” she said.

“In 2013 I led a press freedom mission to Ethiopia as executive director of the International Press Institute, who last year named [Nega] one of its World Press Freedom Heroes. The mission was a joint effort between IPI and the World Association of Newspapers (WAN_IFRA).

“South Africa’s Ferial Haffajee as well as Kabiru Yusuf of Nigeria joined me on that four-day mission. Unfortunately our attempts to meet with the journalists in prison was repeatedly denied, but Ferial and I were able to meet with some family members. I only hope that other journalists who remain in prison are also released. I, along with other members of the press freedom advocacy community, will continue to fight for their release and until that time, humane treatment while they are imprisoned.”

Sensitivity Training to Follow Advertiser Backlash

In Boston, “WEEI has canceled its live programming Friday in order for its full staff to participate in sensitivity training, a response to the advertiser backlash to a host mocking Tom Brady’s agent with a stereotypical accent last week,” Chad Finn reported Wednesday for boston.com.

Shirley Leung
Shirley Leung

Shirley Leung, a Boston Globe columnist, wrote Wednesday, “defections are on the rise, especially after I contacted advertisers to explain themselves. On Tuesday, three more organizations — Citizens Bank, the Massachusetts State Lottery, and the Massachusetts Health Connector — cut ties with WEEI.

“For those keeping score at home, that means at least five advertisers — including Comcast Corp. and City of Boston Credit Union — have either terminated or suspended commercial buys on the popular sports talk station.

“Entercom, WEEI’s owner and one of the biggest radio companies in the country, is condoning a culture of hate and acceptance of the unacceptable.

“The reason some advertisers are taking their money elsewhere is simple. It’s hard to defend WEEI’s offensive commentary. . . .”

Leung also wrote, “Midday cohost Christian Fauria set off the current wave of advertiser blowback when he imitated sports agent Don Yee using a stereotypical Asian accent. Yee, who is of Chinese descent and was born in the United States, speaks English without an accent; he represents Brady and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.

“On Friday, WEEI suspended Fauria for five days, characterizing his behavior as an ‘insensitive and ill-conceived attempt at humor.’

“His reprimand came two weeks after the suspension of another WEEI personality, Alex Reimer. The fill-in host was suspended indefinitely after using a derogatory phrase to describe Brady’s daughter.

“For too long, WEEI drove ratings by spewing hate and vitriol disguised as sports talk. Finally, some advertisers have had enough. What about the others? Let me know if you still want your name associated with the station. . . .”

" What’s happening on Capitol Hill this week, at Trump’s behest, is nothing other than an attempt by Republicans to slow the inexorable march toward that point at midcentury when the United States becomes a majority-minority nation.."
“What’s happening on Capitol Hill this week, at Trump’s behest, is nothing other than an attempt by Republicans to slow the inexorable march toward that point at midcentury when the United States becomes a majority-minority nation.”

Trump’s Losing Effort to ‘Keep America White’

The efforts by President Trump to keep America white are getting increasingly dark,” columnist Dana Milbank wrote Tuesday in the Washington Post.

“Make no mistake: What’s happening on Capitol Hill this week, at Trump’s behest, is nothing other than an attempt by Republicans to slow the inexorable march toward that point at midcentury when the United States becomes a majority-minority nation.

“In the long run, they are merely putting a finger in the dike. But in the short term, the Trump-backed immigration proposal, combined with other recent moves by the administration and its allies — support for voter suppression, gerrymandering and various other schemes to disenfranchise minority voters — could extend the white hegemony that brought Trump to power and sustains Republicans.

“For ages, Republicans said that their beef was with illegal immigrants and that legal immigrants should be embraced and welcomed. No longer. In the immigration fight on the Hill, there is broad bipartisan consensus to legalize the ‘dreamers’ — illegal immigrants brought here as children — and to fortify border security. The dispute is really about the Trump proposal to rein in legal immigration by undoing the family-based approach, in which immigrants petition to bring over immediate family, that has always been at the heart of U.S. immigration.

“Though details aren’t yet known, estimates are that the legislation would cut legal immigration, currently 1.1 million per year, by 300,000 to 500,000 annually. A previous version of the ‘chain migration’ proposal by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) would have cut legal immigration by half a million a year, by their own account. . . .”

NAHJ to Meet With Editor Over Cartoon

Karen Moses
Karen Moses

A delegation from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists plans to meet March 5 in Albuquerque, N.M. with Karen Moses, editor-in-chief of the Albuquerque Journal, over an offensive cartoon for which Moses has apologized.

The illustration, by onetime New York Post cartoonist Sean Delonas, equated the young, undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” with members of the criminal Latino gang MS-13, a favorite target of President Trump in his discussions of immigration.

Delonas, explaining to the New York Times the basis for the cartoon. said, “I’ve learned that MS-13 is purposely sending minors over here to commit crimes. I’m pretty sure that the cartels are using minors for a lot of their drug dealing.”

However, a Washington Post opinion piece by José Miguel Cruz, director of research in the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, pointed out on Jan. 31 that Trump’s arguments about MS-13, and thus Delonas’ cartoon, rest on a faulty premise.

Cruz, who has conducted research on Central American gangs since 1996, wrote, “According to Justice Department estimates, MS-13 is a small gang, compared with the Bloods, Crips and Almighty Latin King Nation.

“The estimated 10,000 MS-13 gang members in the United States account for less than 1 percent of the estimated 1.4 million total gang members in the country. According to CNN, 104 of the 1,300 gang members arrested during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweep last May — 8 percent — were linked to MS-13.

“And the gang did not come from south of the border. MS-13 is as American-made as Google — or, for that matter, as Trump. . . .”

NAHJ Region 7 Director Dianna Náñez, New Mexico Chapter President May Ortega and former NAHJ President Dino Chiecchi are to join NAHJ President Brandon Benavides to meet with Moses, Editorial Page Editor D’Val Wesphal and Managing Editor Dan Herrera.

“We are meeting with members of the NAHJ board next month, and are interested in hearing their views,” Moses messaged Journal-isms.

Monica Richardson Gets Expanded Duties at AJC

Monica Richardson
Monica Richardson

Monica R. Richardson becomes senior managing editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a reordering of responsibilities prompted by the departure of Managing Editor Bert Roughton, Editor Kevin Riley told staff members in a memo Tuesday.

Richardson was digital managing editor. She will now “oversee the largest part of our newsgathering and reporting areas, as well as the digital and social media teams. She will continue to report to me,” Riley wrote.

Also reporting to Riley will be Mark Waligore, managing editor and senior print operations director.

In addition to Richardson, black journalists in AJC management ranks include Leroy Chapman Jr., deputy managing editor, who reports to Richardson; and Andre Jackson, editorial editor, who reports to Riley.

Richardson joined the AJC in 2006 from the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader. She has been senior editor/metro, senior editor/planning, Gwinett bureau chief and beats team leader for for News, Sports, Living and Business.

Portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama are unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery. (Credit: National Portrait Gallery)
Portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama are unveiled Monday at the National Portrait Gallery.  They are flanked by artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. (Credit: National Portrait Gallery)

Critics Weigh In on New Obama Portraits

The official portrait of Michelle Obama, painted by Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald, was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery on Monday morning, and became a national event, with everyday tweeters, art enthusiasts and art critics sounding off,” Brittany Britto reported Tuesday for the Baltimore Sun.

“While some critics complimented Sherald’s signature style, which included her trademark ‘grayscale,’ others thought Obama’s floor-length dress, which was reminiscent of the quilts made by a black community in Alabama, was distracting, or worse — that the former first lady’s portrait looked nothing like her.

“Here’s a roundup of some of the art experts’ reactions: . . .”

Philadelphia Tribune Partners With NBC

NBC10 Philadelphia/WCAU and Telemundo62/WWSI and The Philadelphia Tribune Media group are announcing a new collaborative partnership in the Greater Philadelphia region,” the Tribune reported on Friday.

“Under the new partnership, The Philadelphia Tribune and NBC10/Telemundo62 agree to share news and community resources to better serve the region.

“ ‘We are excited about this new partnership with NBC10 and Telemundo62,’ said Robert W. Bogle, president of The Philadelphia Tribune. ‘This is an opportunity for the stations to further expand its coverage of the African American community and for the Tribune to enhance its coverage of breaking news, weather, investigative and consumer reports across the Philadelphia region.’

“Founded in 1884 by Christopher James Perry, Sr., The Philadelphia Tribune is America’s oldest and the Greater Philadelphia region’s largest daily audited newspaper serving the African-American community. . . .”

WBAL-TV reported on the Afro-American’s 125 anniversary last year.

Publisher Jake Oliver Replaced at Afro-American

The board of the Baltimore-based Afro-American, which says it is the longest-running African American family-owned newspaper in the nation, undertook a leadership shakeup Monday. John “Jake” Oliver Jr., chairman and publisher since 1986, was replaced with the Rev. Dr. Frances Murphy Draper, who served as president of the company from 1987 to 1999, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.

John 'Jake' Oliver
John ‘Jake’ Oliver Jr.

Oliver said “I’m not ready to talk about it” when asked by telephone Wednesday what precipitated the shakeup, but he was willing to discuss what he considered the paper’s signature achievement under his leadership: an early embrace of the Internet. “We were one of the first to have a website,” he said, pegging the digital embrace to about 1987.

The Afro, which once had editions in Richmond, Va, New Jersey and Washington as well as Baltimore, has consolidated operations in Baltimore. Print circulation is “constantly going down,” Oliver said, and is now somewhere around 10,000 to 13,000. However, the Afro is active on social media, with page views dependent on individual stories.

“Black folks don’t have too much time to focus on Trump,” Oliver said. “They’re pretty much holding their breath and not paying too much attention to him.”

Instead, Afro readers prefer positive stories about other black people. Also popular are stories about “us doing stupid things,” to which readers can express their disapproval. “Someone compared Tom Brady to LeBron James. People went crazy,” he said.

Draper, great-granddaughter of the paper’s founder, John H. Murphy, did not respond to requests for comment.

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4 comments

richard February 14, 2018 at 8:34 pm

From Todd Steven Burroughs:

Lerone Bennett Jr. was the gold standard for Black journalists and historians. As Amiri Baraka once eulogized about James Baldwin, Bennett “traveled the world like its historian and its biographer.”

People remember “Before the Mayflower,” but they might have forgotten that Bennett once shared a jeep with the SNCC activists in the South, covered the Million Man March, and, perhaps one of his greatest articles, covered extensively the Pan-African Conference in Tanzania in 1974. That last article was one of the most substantive for a Black publication, and that was when there was actual competition!

Lerone Bennett made Ebony a legitimate publication, and Johnson knew it. Johnson will forever be known to me as the Black millionaire who funded his own historian. Together, they made money with Bennett’s book. But they also helped to make history by writing history.

I grew up with “A History of Black America,” Bennett’s “encyclopedia” series on Black history that was published in the 1970s.
https://www.amazon.com/Ebony-Pictorial-History-Black-America/dp/0874850495

I have spent my life imitating Lerone Bennett Jr., and will continue to do so.

Also, Lerone Bennett also wrote my favorite history book, “The Shaping of Black America.” Sadly, it’s one of his lesser-known works. In it, Bennett describes the founding and the building of Black America in the 18th century, describing the development of Black communities.

Reply
Paulette Rogers February 14, 2018 at 8:50 pm

God’s great Peace!❤️
Chicago loves you.

Reply
richard February 15, 2018 at 9:46 am

From Derrick Z. Jackson on Lerone Bennett Jr.:

Happy I was able to thank him at NABJ years ago. His Before the Mayflower was my key text when my HS world history teacher didn’t have Africa on his syllabus. I told him that I would teach on Africa for the week. He took me up on it. I told the teacher that I would teach only if I could give a test that counted for the grade. He agreed.

It was at Marshall High School in Milwaukee.

Reply
W Paul Coates February 16, 2018 at 4:00 am

Before the Mayflower was my grounding text in African American history. it provided a different voice and contrasting perspective to Franklin’s more moderate “From Slavery to Freedom”. BTM was just fiery enough to let me know there was more to our story and was one of the books that set me on my quest to make sure that story got told. my debt to Bennett is life long and only repaid by holding up his name.

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