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What Harriet Tubman Told Gwen Ifill

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800 at Unveiling of Stamp for Journalist

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“This is the time for journalists to be brave, demanding, unyielding, persistent, and committed to sharing truth with the nation,” former attorney general Eric Holder said at the ceremony honoring Gwen Ifill. Seated, from left, are Michele Norris, Dorothy Tucker, Ronald A. Stroman, Bert Ifill, Sherrilyn Ifill, Rev. William H. Lamar IV and the Rev. Earle Ifill. (Credit: Richard Prince)

800 at Unveiling of Stamp for Journalist

“I hear an ancestral conversation between two ancestors whose images grace Black Heritage stamps,” the Rev. William H. Lamar IV told the hundreds gathered Thursday at Washington’s Metropolitan AME Church. “Mother Harriet Tubman turns to Gwen, and says to Gwen, ‘Baby, I hear you got a stamp.’

“And Gwen turns to Mother Harriet and says, ‘I do.’ And then Gwen says to Mother Harriet, ‘Let’s meet back here when they unveil the new $20 bill.’ “

That was the kind of company the late Gwen Ifill, most recently co-anchor of the “PBS NewsHour,” was keeping, according to those paying tribute to the 43rd person to be honored with a postage stamp in the Postal Service’s Black Heritage series.

Ifill is there with Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, Sojourner Truth, Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall and Zora Neale Hurston, among others.

Ronald A. Stroman, deputy postmaster general and an African American, named some of the most celebrated. As Lamar alluded to, Tubman, in addition to having her own stamp, is slated to appear on the $20 bill, according to a 2016 announcement from former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, even though current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last year that no new designs would be forthcoming until 2028.

Each of those African Americans so honored was a product of his or her own time.

In today’s Washington, a presidential administration smears and demonizes journalists; cabinet officials even curse at them behind closed doors. Some “news” outlets choose their own set of assertions, presented as facts and cherry-picked along partisan and ideological lines.

In such a climate, Ifill Thursday became a symbol of old-fashioned journalistic values, much like her “PBS NewsHour” colleague, Jim Lehrer, who died last week at 85 and who, current anchor Judy Woodruff said, “was a mentor to both of us.”

Unlike Lehrer, however, Ifill was also an exemplar of a tradition of excellence by black people and in particular, of African American women, speakers said.

“Many mark their success by running away from the masses of black people, by sprinting away from black cultural and social traditions, by galloping away from black organizations, by scurrying away . . .,” Lamar preached. Not Ifill. “Gwen owed a debt to our ancestors and she paid it in full. . . .”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was proud to be “Gwen Ifill’s mayor” and declared it “Gwen Ifill Day” in the District of Columbia.

About 800 people, overwhelmingly but not exclusively African American, filled Metropolitan AME Church, Ifill’s place of worship, to pay tribute. Its pews stood below African quilts. The rendition of the Star Spangled Banner that opened the program, before all sang “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” had a bluesy feel. As for the speakers, “It was a quote machine,” Wayne Dawkins, who teaches journalism at Morgan State University, said afterward.

No one mentioned the name of the 45th president, but no one had to.

“Today, in this city, at this time, the need for her is painfully acute,” Eric Holder, attorney general in the Obama administration, declared to applause. “This is a the time for journalists to be brave, demanding, unyielding, persistent, and committed to sharing truth with the nation.

“This is not a time to embrace equivalence over fact. These are the traits that defined Gwen Ifill as a journalist and as a person. I hope her friends in the media will dedicate themselves, at this critical hour, [to] acting in a way that is consistent with her example.”

Speakers made much of the fact that Ifill is on a “Forever” stamp, and that it reads “Gwen Ifill Forever.”  “She will forever be in our hearts,” Holder said. As the unveiling took place, musicians played Stevie Wonder’s “As,” with its repetition of the word “always.”  


From left, some members of the National Association of Black Journalists in attendance: Charles Robinson, Jeffrey Ballou, Everett L. Marshburn, Angela Y. Robinson, Athelia Knight, Joe Davidson, Dorothy Tucker, Dorothy Gilliam, Roland Martin, Sam Ford, Lynne Adrine, Greg Morrison and Richard Prince. (Credit: NABJ)

Dorothy Tucker, investigative reporter for Chicago’s WBBM-TV and president of the National Association of Black Journalists, told the crowd, “I’d like to think Gwen would be most proud of the impact she has had on black journalists worldwide, 4,100 of which I represent as president of NABJ. . . . She also represented the heart and soul of what NABJ is all about.”

Yamiche Alcindor, who covers the White House on Ifill’s “NewsHour,” was NABJ’s “Emerging Journalist of the Year” in 2013, Tucker noted. She said Alcindor once wrote Ifill, “Growing up, wanting to be a journalist, the fact that you were covering the White House, that meant something. That meant that I could go and pursue the career and become a journalist.”

Tucker continued, “We are grateful for the role Gwen played in helping to raise up a generation of fearless and unstoppable black and female journalists by the example she was every day on air and off.”

Ifill was an achiever. She worked for the Baltimore Evening Sun, the Boston Herald, the Washington Post, the New York Times and NBC News before her final stop at the “PBS NewsHour.” She wasn’t one of the “cool kids” in school, her cousin, Sherrilyn A. Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. told the crowd. None of the Ifill kids was.

But, Sherrilyn Ifill said with a smile, looking up at the towering image of the new stamp, “today Gwen is the coolest.”

Former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton lauded Gwen Ifill, Obama by a message transmitted via Holder and Clinton in a video. Clinton noted Ifill’s drive to make the news industry more inclusive, testified that she could ask tough questions and said that today, “a free and fair press is more important not just for us in America but across the world.”

It didn’t have to be said that autocrats in other countries have adopted the Trump administration’s hostility toward the press, with sometimes fatal consequences for members of the Fourth Estate.

As they did with the word “Forever,” Ifill’s admirers made the most of the stamp as a vehicle to honor the new icon.

Think of “how we can use this beautiful stamp to remain connected to each other,” urged Michele Norris, Ifill’s friend and fellow broadcaster, who served as mistress of ceremonies. “Maybe some of you will actually put the device down and send a letter to somebody. . . . If there is a person in your life that you have not talked to in some time, send them a letter. If there is someone who is deserving of gratitude and you just haven’t gotten around to saying it, send them a letter.

“But in the spirit of Gwen Ifill, if there is someone who you don’t agree with — ’cause that’s happening now in this country — someone who might be on the other side of a particular issue — one of Gwen’s hallmarks is that she taught there were not just two sides, she knew that there were many sides, and she took a 360 view when she did research. So send perhaps that person a letter,” said this daughter of postal workers.

“And let them know that you may not respect their ideology, but you cherish the connection with them. . . .”

At the end of the nearly two-hour ceremony, attendees lined up to have their programs signed by the speakers, who were arrayed at a table in the church’s Frederick Douglass Hall (he, too was a congregant), to purchase their first-day-of-issue stamps, eat finger food, catch up with friends and take photographs. They all wore their souvenir pins featuring the Gwen Ifill stamp in full color.

Roland Martin concluded his livestreaming of the service on “Roland Martin Unfiltered” online, where in addition to the websites of the “PBS NewsHour” and U.S. Postal Service, those who missed the ceremony could catch up by watching the video.

Viewers who saw Thursday night’s “NewsHour,” which featured a full report on the ceremony, knew the significance of the purple outfit that Woodruff wore. It was the color Ifill looked best in, Woodruff had said. The two women, the first all-female anchor team on a nightly network television newscast, would initially check with each other daily to be sure they weren’t wearing the same color.

And they had determined that they would defy the cynics who expected catfights.  

“I had to wear it today,” Woodruff told the congregation, referring to her purple, “even if we clashed.”  

(More to come)

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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@yahoogroups.com

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