Gene roberts hank klibanoff richard j allen the race beat (v5 0)

We dedicate this book to our late parents, Eugene L “Pop” and Margaret Roberts, and Morris and Roslyn Klibanoff, who continue to inspire us CONTENTS TITLE PAGE DEDICATION CHAPTER • AN AMERICAN DILEMMA: “AN ASTONISHING IGNORANCE ” CHAPTER CHAPTER • • SOUTHERN EDITORS IN A TIME OF FERMENT CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER • “A FIGHTING PRESS” • ASHMORE VIEWS THE SOUTH THE B ROWN DECISIONS HARDEN THE SOUTH CHAPTER • INTO MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER • THE TILL TRIAL • WHERE MASSIVE AND PASSIVE RESISTANCE MEET CHAPTER • ALABAMA CHAPTER 10 • CHAPTER 11 • CHAPTER 12 NEW EYES ON THE OLD SOUTH • CHAPTER 14 • LITTLE ROCK SHOWDOWN • CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 15 TOWARD LITTLE ROCK • BACKFIRE IN VIRGINIA FROM SIT-INS TO SNCC ALABAMA VERSUS THE TIMES, FREEDOM RIDERS VERSUS THE SOUTH CHAPTER 16 • CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 • • • ALBANY OLE MISS WALLACE AND KING DEFIANCE AT CLOSE RANGE • THE KILLING SEASON CHAPTER 21 • CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 FREEDOM SUMMER • • NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS PHOTO CREDITS PHOTO INSERT COPYRIGHT SELMA BEYOND THE RACE BEAT CHAPTER AN AMERICAN DILEMMA: “AN ASTONISHING IGNORANCE ” The winter of 1940 was a cruel one for Gunnar Myrdal, and spring was shaping up even worse He was in the United States, finishing the research on the most comprehensive study yet of race relations and the condition of Negroes in America But he was having trouble reaching conclusions, and he struggled to outline and conceptualize the writing “The whole plan is now in danger of breaking down,” he wrote the Carnegie Foundation, which was underwriting his project What's more, the gathering crisis in Europe had thrown him into a depression; he feared for the very existence of his native Sweden In April, Nazi Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway Myrdal believed Sweden would be next He put aside more than two years of work by 125 researchers and began arranging passage home for himself, his wife, Alva, and their three children He and Alva wanted to fight alongside their countrymen if the worst should come The boat he found, the Mathilda Thorden, a Finnish freighter, was laden with explosives, and the captain tried to dissuade the Myrdals from boarding the dangerous ship When this failed, the captain jokingly urged Myrdal to look on the bright side He would not have to worry about his family freezing to death in icy waters If German U-boats attacked, the resulting explosion would almost certainly kill everyone instantly The U-boats did not attack, and the Myrdals arrived in Sweden only to be appalled by what was happening there Rather than preparing for war with Germany, the Swedish government was seeking an accommodation with the Nazis Knowing that Germany was monitoring the Swedish press for anti-German sentiment, the government first confiscated copies of anti-Nazi newspapers; then, emboldened, it interfered with the distribution of one of the nation's most important dailies, Göteborgs Handelstidning This, Myrdal believed, could not happen in America He was outraged “The press is strangled,” he wrote to a Swedish friend in the United States “Nothing gets written about Germany News is suppressed.”1 There and then, Myrdal's understanding of America and its race relations became crystallized In a book that quickly took precedence over his Carnegie project, then became its seed, Gunnar and Alva Myrdal wrote Kontakt med Amerika (Contact with America), which was crafted largely to rally Swedish resistance against Hitler In Kontakt, published in 1941, the Myrdals argued that Swedes had much to learn from America about democracy, dialogue, and self-criticism “The secret,” they wrote, “is that America, ahead of every other country in the whole Western world, large or small, has a living system of expressed ideals for human cooperation which is unified, stable and clearly formulated.”2 The Carnegie project, they added, was evidence of America's willingness to sanction a sweeping examination and discussion of a national problem Almost all of America's citizens, the Myrdals said, believed in free speech and a free press Americans respected other viewpoints even when they strongly disagreed As a result, diverse ethnic groups were living with one another in peace while Europe was tearing itself apart Before writing Kontakt, Myrdal didn't have the insight or context he needed for his weightier book on race in America Nor did he have the words he felt would serve as the road map to change Three years earlier, in 1938, he had reached the South, the dark side of the moon There, he had found an enigmatic, sometimes exotic, always deeply divided and repressive society whose behavior was known to, but overlooked by, the world beyond In pursuit of an understanding and insight that was still beyond his grasp, his immersion had been total, the details of his discoveries had been staggering, and he had come to a point where he was no longer horrified by the pathology of racism or stunned by the cruelty and pervasiveness of discrimination He had found himself fascinated by the way an entire social order had been built, and rationalized, around race By early 1940, Myrdal frequently found himself feeling oddly optimistic about attitudes he found despicable, and he was moving, somewhat unwittingly, toward the conclusion that would become the core definition of his landmark work, An American Dilemma: that Americans, for all their differences, for all their warring and rivalries, were bound by a distinct “American creed,” a common set of values that embodied such concepts as fair play and an equal chance for everyone He was coming to that view in the unlikeliest of settings He had been able to sit with the rapaciously racist U.S senator from Mississippi Theodore Bilbo, listen to his proposal for shipping Negroes back to Africa, ask why he hadn't proposed instead that they be sterilized, and come away uplifted by Bilbo's answer “American opinion would never allow it,” Bilbo had told him “It goes against all our ideals and the sentiments of the people.”3 But for all his excitement, information, and knowledge, Myrdal remained mystified How had the South's certifiable, pathological inhumanity toward Negroes been allowed to exist for so long into the twentieth century? Why didn't anyone outside the South know? If they did know, why didn't they something about it? Who could something about it? Who would? Where would the leadership for change come from? Myrdal returned to the United States and his racial study in 1941, brimming with the insights he would need for An American Dilemma to have an impact on the country Seeing his homeland's willingness to trade freedoms for security of another kind, Myrdal came to appreciate the vital role the American press could play in challenging the status quo of race relations In Sweden, newspapers wanted to report the news but were blocked by the government In America, the First Amendment kept the government in check, but the press, other than black newspapers and a handful of liberal southern editors, simply didn't recognize racism in America as a story The segregation of the Negro in America, by law in the South and by neighborhood and social and economic stratification in the North, had engulfed the press as well as America's citizens The mainstream American press wrote about whites but seldom about Negro Americans or discrimination against them; that was left to the Negro press Myrdal had a clear understanding of the Negro press's role in fostering positive discontent He saw the essential leadership role that southern moderate and liberal white editors were playing by speaking out against institutionalized race discrimination, yet he was aware of the anguish they felt as the pressure to conform intensified There was also the segregationist press in the South that dehumanized Negroes in print and suppressed the biggest story in their midst And he came to see the northern press—and the national press, such as it was—as the best hope for force-feeding the rest of the nation a diet so loaded with stories about the cruelty of racism that it would have to rise up in protest “The Northerner does not have his social conscience and all his political thinking permeated with the Negro problem as the Southerner does,” Myrdal wrote in the second chapter of An American Dilemma “Rather, he succeeds in forgetting about it most of the time The Northern newspapers help him by minimizing all Negro news, except crime news The Northerners want to hear as little as possible about the Negroes, both in the South and in the North, and they have, of course, good reasons for that “The result is an astonishing ignorance about the Negro on the part of the white public in the North White Southerners, too, are ignorant of many phases of the Negro's life, but their ignorance has not such a simple and unemotional character as that in the North There are many educated Northerners who are well informed about foreign problems but almost absolutely ignorant about Negro conditions both in their own city and in the nation as a whole.”5 Left to their own devices, white people in America would want to keep it that way, Myrdal wrote They'd prefer to be able to accept the stereotype that Negroes “are criminal and of disgustingly, but somewhat enticingly, loose sexual morals; that they are religious and have a gift for dancing and singing; and that they are the happy-go-lucky children of nature who get a kick out of life which white people are too civilized to get.”6 Myrdal concluded that there was one barrier between the white northerner's ignorance and his sense of outrage that the creed was being poisoned That barrier was knowledge, incontrovertible information that was strong enough, graphic enough, and constant enough to overcome “the opportunistic desire of the whites for ignorance.” “A great many Northerners, perhaps the majority, get shocked and shaken in their conscience when they learn the facts,” Myrdal wrote “The average Northerner does not understand the reality and the effects of such discriminations as those in which he himself is taking part in his routine of life.” Then, underscoring his point in italics, Myrdal reached the conclusion that would prove to be uncannily prescient Even before he got to the fiftieth page of his tome, he wrote, “To get publicity is of the highest strategic importance to the Negro people.” He added, “There is no doubt, in the writer's opinion, that a great majority of white people in America would be prepared to give the Negro a substantially better deal if they knew the facts.”7 The future of race relations, Myrdal believed, rested largely in the hands of the American press An American Dilemma was both a portrait of segregation and a mirror in which an emerging generation of southerners would measure themselves In a few short years, the book would have a personal impact on a core group of journalists, judges, lawyers, and academicians, who, in turn, would exercise influence on race relations in the South over the next two decades The book would become a cornerstone of the Supreme Court's landmark verdict against school segregation a full decade later, and it would become a touchstone by which progressive journalists, both southern and northern, would measure how far the South had come, how far it had to go, and the extent of their roles and responsibilities The Myrdal investigation was so incisive and comprehensive—monumental, even—that it would for many years remain a mandatory starting point for anyone seriously studying race in the United Courtesy Shirley Sessions: Cliff Sessions Matt Heron/Take Stock: Hazel Brannon Smith; Haynes Johnson takes notes as Selma marchers pause for prayer; magazine photographers on Selma march; Gene Roberts interviews Floyd McKissick Chris McNair Studios and Birmingham Civil Rights Institute: Emory O Jackson and Benjamin Mays Tom Langston, The Birmingham News: Attack at Birmingham bus station UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections: Bunche and Myrdal, 1943 University of Virginia Library: Virginius Dabney; James J Kilpatrick Ernest C Withers, Panopticon Gallery: Black press at Emmett Till trial; Newson and Hicks at Ole Miss Ralph Bunche (left) and Gunnar Myrdal met at Bunche's home in Washington, D.C., in June 1943, months before An American Dilemma was published ABOVE: ABOVE: Black reporters and other blacks were allowed to sit at a press table inside the courtroom during the trial of the two men accused of killing Emmett Till Standing, left, Ernest C Withers, TriState Defender photographer; center, David Jackson, Jet and Ebony photographer; far right: James del Rio, a Detroit mortgage banker Seated, in front of Withers, then counter clockwise around table: Rayfield Moody, a Till relative; Mamie Bradley, Till's mother; Simeon Booker (bow tie), Jet; L Alex Wilson, Tri-State Defender; James L Hicks (head of table, facing camera), Afro-American Newspapers; C.H Jones, Southern Mediator Journal; Cloyte Murdock, Ebony; U.S Rep Charles Diggs of Detroit; a woman visiting from Mound Bayou and her son Behind Diggs, left to right: John Carthan, Mrs Till's father; Basil W Brown, a state senator from Michigan ABOVE LEFT: Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, took progressive stands on race issues in the 1940s, but was marginalized by his newspaper's owners with the rise of massive resistance ABOVE RIGHT: Lenoir Chambers, editor of the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, supported the Supreme Court's school desegregation rulings and opposed massive resistance ABOVE: Though he believed early on that the South would never accept integration, Hodding Carter, Jr., owner and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Miss., pressed hard, and with disarming wit, for racial equality ABOVE: Cliff Sessions, UPI reporter in Jackson, broke from the orthodox thinking of his Mississippi childhood, humanized blacks in stories, and even hosted them in his home James J (Jack) Kilpatrick, editor of the Richmond News-Leader, crafted powerful arguments for “interposition” and urged states to oppose federal orders to desegregate ABOVE: ABOVE: As UPI bureau chief in Jackson in the 1950s, John Herbers, seated, encouraged his reporters to give blacks full and fair coverage, which most Mississippi news outlets denied them Thomas R Waring, Jr., editor of the Charleston News & Courier, was a vigorous segregationist who complained about the “invasion” of northern reporters in the South ABOVE: Emory O Jackson, seated, was an NAACP activist and editor of the Birmingham World, whose owners were disdainful of Rev Martin Luther King, Jr Morehouse College President Benjamin Mays spoke at an event honoring Jackson ABOVE: ABOVE: A brilliant and acerbic writer, Grover C Hall, Jr., succeeded his father as editor of the Montgomery Advertiser and adopted his progressive views until he saw the depth of massive resistance Buford Boone, publisher of the Tuscaloosa News, confronted Citizens Council members angry at his support for Autherine Lucy's enrollment at the University of Alabama ABOVE: Hazel Brannon Smith, owner of the Lexington Advertiser, was hounded as a liberal because she editorially opposed police brutality against blacks ABOVE: Harry S Ashmore, executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette, was an incisive writer whose editorials and books influenced the White House and whose charm built bridges between progressive and segregationist editors ABOVE: ABOVE: Risking a solid newspaper career, John Chancellor jumped into television reporting and, in Little Rock, helped NBC News move to the forefront of civil rights coverage L.C and Daisy Bates, left, at head of table, owned the weekly Arkansas State Press while she ran the NAACP in Little Rock She organized, motivated, and, at Thanksgiving, hosted the Little Rock Nine ABOVE: New York Times reporter Benjamin Fine (bow tie) watched as Elizabeth Eckford took verbal abuse outside Central High in Little Rock in 1957, then created a stir by comforting her ABOVE: John N Popham, sent south by The New York Times in 1947, pioneered national coverage of race but was overly optimistic about the white South's willingness to change ABOVE: ABOVE: Relman (Pat) Morin, Associated Press reporter, filed stories from a phone booth outside Central High in Little Rock until it was attacked with him inside it After L Alex Wilson, editor of the Tri-State Defender (Memphis), and other black journalists were assaulted at Central High in Little Rock, black reporters had trouble getting to the front row of civil rights stories ABOVE: Ralph E McGill, editor of The Atlanta Constitution, shed traditional southern views to advocate humanity, equality, and worldliness in front-page columns that appeared seven days a week ABOVE: ABOVE: NBC News interviewed McGill after he won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing New York Times reporter Claude Sitton, reading over the shoulder of a state official during the desegregation of the University of Georgia in 1961, set the pace and the standard for civil rights reporting for six years ABOVE: Karl Fleming, whose fearless reporting helped Newsweek surpass Time magazine in civil rights coverage, grew up in the South, as did many of the influential journalists on the race beat ABOVE As Baltimore Afro-American reporter Moses J Newson (center, in black coat) looks back, the bus in which he was riding with Freedom Riders burns after an attack outside Anniston in May 1961 ABOVE: A soon as he took this photo of an attack on a Freedom Rider, Birmingham News photographer Tom Langston was beaten and his camera discarded This image forced his newspaper to reassess its views on the city's racial problems ABOVE: New York Times reporter Harrison Salisbury found in Birmingham a fear and repressiveness that reminded him of Moscow His story describing it led to libel suits and restrictions on reporters ABOVE: Moses J Newson (left), reporter for the Baltimore Afro-American, and James L Hicks, reporter for the New York Amsterdam News , gained access to the University of Mississippi campus after the riot that accompanied James Meredith's enrollment ABOVE: Jimmy Ward, editor of the Jackson Daily News in Mississippi, was among the segregationist editors to attend a secret meeting in 1959, where they discussed ways to confront the influence of the northern press ABOVE RIGHT: Tom Hederman, editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson and part-owner of both dailies there, produced mean-spirited newspapers that abandoned journalistic standards to fuel discord ABOVE LEFT: Shooting for Life magazine, Charles Moore used short-range lenses to get close to the action in May 1963 when dogs and fire hoses were deployed on demonstrators Moore's work mobilized action on a civil rights bill ABOVE: Three of The Atlanta Constitution's Pulitzer Prize winners—Gene Patterson, Ralph McGill, and Jack Nelson (left to right)—came together in 1967 Nelson was then at the Los Angeles Times bureau in Atlanta ABOVE: Turner Catledge, the top editor of The New York Times, in his office in August 1964, the same month the bodies of three civil rights workers were found outside his hometown, Philadelphia, Miss ABOVE: Alton Wayne Roberts (right), a defendant in the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss., assaulted CBS cameraman Laurens Pierce in early 1965 In Pierce's right hand is a detachable bar he had affixed to his camera for such occasions ABOVE: Washington Star reporter Haynes Johnson took notes as Selma-to-Montgomery marchers prayed in front of a billboard erected by the John Birch Society ABOVE: Magazine photographers (left to right) Bob Adelman, Steve Shapiro, and Charles Moore on the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965 Moore used the motorcyclist to move him up and down the march and to carry his film to an airport ABOVE: Gene Roberts of The New York Times interviewed Floyd McKissick, chairman of CORE (plaid shirt), during James Meredith's march through Mississippi, June 1966 ABOVE: Wilson F “Bill” Minor, Mississippi correspondent for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, doggedly poked at segregationist myths and saw his career, and outlook, defined by race stories ABOVE: Claude Sitton as national editor of The New York Times , 1968, the year Rev Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated ABOVE: Karl Fleming, Newsweek bureau chief in Los Angeles, had always been welcomed in black neighborhoods in the South But in Watts, a black district of Los Angeles, in 1966, he was struck in the head with a four-by-four ABOVE: FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2007 Copyright © 2006 by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff All rights reserved Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006 Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Roberts, Gene The race beat : the press, the civil rights struggle, and the awakening of a nation / Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff.—1st ed p cm Race relations—Press coverage—United States African Americans—Press coverage—History—20th century African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century I Klibanoff, Hank II Title PN4888.R3R63 2006 070.44'93058—dc22 200645251 Gene Roberts photograph © University of Maryland Hank Klibanoff photograph © The Atlanta Journal-Constitution www.vintagebooks.com eISBN: 978-0-307-45594-9 v3.0 ... respect the justice system Negroes were terrified of it Whites were the judges, the jurors, the bailiffs, the court clerks, the stenographers, the arresting officers, and the jailers Only the instruments... Norfolk''s Journal and Guide, the largest of the southern weeklies The Pittsburgh Courier sold widely across the South and was easily the largest of all the Negro papers Negroes in the southern and... relieved that the other two judges had managed to wrestle the heinous monster to the ground Judge Waring''s views, his nephew wrote, would lead to ? ?the exterminat[ion] of the White race. ”10 The Briggs