From a Bygone Era

I recently read The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff. It tells the story of the print and electronic press as the civil rights movement developed in after World War II. The story begins with the near complete absence of news about black Americans in the mainstream media. In the early postwar era, only black owned newspapers covered the happenings of their community. Roberts and Kilbanoff highlight the pioneering contributions of the black journalists and publishers of that era.

As the civil rights movement grew, however, black journalists were largely excluded from the story, except for isolated instances like the Emmett Till murder trial (where they were greeted with “Good morning, niggers” by the local sheriff). All too often, black journalists were singled out by white mobs and could not get close enough to the events to report.

In their absence, the white mainstream media began paying attention, coverage was limited and spotty at first, led by a few courageous southern editorialists and publishers but as the story developed, other media soon joined in. The Race Beat profiles many of the reporters such at Claude Sitton of the New York Times, Hank Fleming of Newsweek, Jack Nelson of the Atlanta Constitution and later the LA Times and John Chancellor of NBC who made civil rights their beat.

The story is gripping and detailed but moves along well. Having grown up in the south and experienced some of the events first hand, The Race Beat offers an interesting view of that experience. Even more, it shows how television came into its own as a news medium. The civil rights era was a time when television news was just emerging and reporters were not only covering the story but becoming part of it, either by telling the world what was going on and occasionally coming under attack by those who did not want them reporting on the story. It was also an era of dramatic photography splashed across front pages of newspapers and in Life magazine feature stories.

What impressed me most about the narrative was the correspondents’ dedication to, first, understanding the events they were covering and, second, to making sure that story went out over the air and into print. The black press and its reporters, who were often barred from the scene still managed to provide important information, reporting on what they could see and where they could get. Often, their reports provided background and detail from a community where white reporters had limited access and one with which most Americans were wholly uninformed.

Reading this book, I am struck by the contrast between the “race beat” reporters and today’s correspondents. Forty years ago, the press was far more aggressive in its work, it seems to me. Yeah, it took a while for the civil rights story to emerge but once it did, the press was diligent in getting the story out. Contrast that with today’s media which operate more as megaphones or stenographers for the corporate-industrial government that more than ever seeks to manipulate and conceal information. The media still show occasional signs of life–Dana Priest’s stories in the Washington Post about secret prisons and the neglect of veterans at Walter Reed come to mind–but those few instances only highlight the contrast between then and now.