“Journalistic Malpractice”: An Overlooked Dream, Now Remembered
The city of Washington had been on edge for days. Fearing a riot, mayhem or lord knows what, many left town to avoid the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The organizers predicted a crowd of more than 100,000 protesting Negroes, as we called black people then. Just the idea of such a horde seemed to scare the white residents of what was still a southern town.
There was no rush-hour traffic on Aug. 28, 1963; almost no one went to work. Downtown, the sidewalks were empty and businesses were closed. But at Union Station, the joint was jumping. So was the Greyhound bus station on New York Avenue. Scores of thousands — mostly black but about a third white — streamed out of trains and buses and began to march along the Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial.
I was a Post summer intern — a kid reporter on his first big story — and one of 60 staffers the paper deployed that day. This was a tiny fraction of the number of National Guardsmen and police on the streets but a veritable army for what was then still a provincial daily paper. Ben Gilbert, the imperious city editor, had spent weeks planning the coverage. With help from colleagues, he was about to make one of the biggest goofs of his long career.
I missed the first part of the march. I was sent to watch celebrities arrive at National Airport, where I attended a news conference by Marlon Brando, who wanted to be sure his presence was not misunderstood. Yes, Negroes were treated badly in the United States, Brando said, but “don’t forget the Indian problem.” As soon as the march was over, he promised, he would again be fighting to resolve “the Indian problem.”
I was then dispatched to the corner of Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Post reporters were stationed on every block of Constitution and throughout the Mall to cover any untoward incident. A sea of good-natured, well-dressed humanity paraded before me. The marchers carried signs but shouted no slogans. There was no hint of “trouble,” only the good news of a polite, orderly crowd.
But I was afraid of Gilbert, so I stayed at my post for several hours. Eventually I wandered toward the Lincoln Memorial, where the speeches had been delivered. It was a beautiful August afternoon, and everyone was having a fine time.
I was too late to hear the speeches but soon heard about them, particularly the address by John Lewis, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. This is the same John Lewis we know today as an avuncular Georgia representative, a gentle though forceful agitator for the rights of African Americans and the poor. In 1963, Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department considered him a dangerous radical. So he got a disproportionate share of attention from reporters and officials.
The Post’s courtly civil rights reporter, Robert E. Lee Baker — he used Robert E. Baker as a less-provocative byline — reported: “Lewis had intended to scorch the Kennedy Administration and Congress and ‘cheap politicians’ in a highly emotional speech.” But, Baker wrote, “he toned it down.” No one got scorched.
The Post, however, got embarrassed. The main event that day was what we now call the “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most important speeches in U.S. history. But on the day it was given, The Post didn’t think so. We nearly failed to mention it at all.
We were poised and ready for a riot, for trouble, for unexpected events — but not for history to be made. Baker’s 1,300-word lead story, which began under a banner headline on the front page and summarized the events of the day, did not mention King’s name or his speech. It did note that the crowd easily exceeded 200,000, the biggest assemblage in Washington “within memory” — and they all remained “orderly.”
In that paper of Aug. 29, 1963, The Post published two dozen stories about the march. Every one missed the importance of King’s address. The words “I have a dream” appeared in only one, a wrap-up of the day’s rhetoric on Page A15 — in the fifth paragraph. We also printed brief excerpts from the speeches, but the three paragraphs chosen from King’s speech did not include “I have a dream.”
I’ve never seen anyone call us on this bit of journalistic malpractice. Perhaps this anniversary provides a good moment to cop a plea. We blew it.
By: Robert G. Kaiser, Associate Editor, The Washington Post, August 25, 2013
“The Opiate Of Delay Persists”: Lest We Forget, Martin Luther King Jr’s Dream Still Echoes Today
The things we forget about the March on Washington are the things we most need to remember 50 years on.
We forget that the majestically peaceful assemblage that moved a nation came in the wake of brutal resistance to civil rights and equality. And that there would be more to come.
A young organizer named John Lewis spoke at the march of living “in constant fear of a police state.” He would suffer more. On March 7, 1965, Lewis and his colleague Hosea Williams led marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. They were met by mounted state troopers who would fracture Lewis’s skull. As we celebrate Lewis’s ultimate triumph and his distinguished career in the House of Representatives, we should never lose sight of all it took for him to get there.
We forget that the formal name of the great gathering before the Lincoln Memorial was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Jobs came first, an acknowledgement that the ability to enjoy liberty depends upon having the economic wherewithal to exercise our rights. The organizing manual for the march, as Michele Norris pointed out in Time magazine, spoke of demands that included “dignified jobs at decent wages.” It is a demand as relevant as ever.
We forget that many who were called moderate — including good people who supported civil rights — kept counseling patience and worried that the march might unleash violence.
Martin Luther King Jr. answered them in the oration that would introduce tens of millions of white Americans to the moral rhythms and scriptural poetry that define the African American pulpit.
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” King declared. “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” How often has the opiate of delay been prescribed to scuttle social change?
King’s dream speech was partly planned and partly improvised, as Taylor Branch reported in “Parting the Waters,” his book on the early King years. One reviewer of the speech, a principal target of King’s persuasion, pronounced it a success. “He’s damn good,” President John F. Kennedy told his aides in the White House.
He was. King’s genius lay in striking a precise balance between comforting his fellow citizens and challenging them. Like Lincoln before him, King discovered the call for justice in the promises of our founders.
“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” King said. “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” King’s dream was the latest chapter in our story. “It is a dream,” he insisted, “deeply rooted in the American Dream.”
We also remember how profoundly colorblind King’s dream was. He looked to a day when “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls.”
We forget that the passage immediately preceding his description of those happy children was a sharp rebuke to the state of “Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification.’ ” He was referencing discredited states’-rights notions invoked to deny the rights of Americans of color. I intend no offense here toward Alabama. But we should recognize the origins of slogans still widely used today to thwart the advance of equal rights.
And at a moment when voting rights are again under threat, the historian Gary May’s new book on the Voting Rights Act, “Bending Toward Justice,” reminds us of what King said in 1957, at another Lincoln Memorial rally. Without the right to cast a ballot, King said, “I cannot make up my own mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.” Are we turning back to such a time?
King called our country forward on that beautiful day in 1963, but he also called out our failings. He told us there could be no peace without justice, and no justice without struggle. We honor him best by sharing not only his hope but also his impatience and his resolve.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 21, 2013
“What Does ‘Some Woman’ Know?”: Commissioner Ray Kelly, “No Question” More People Will Die Without Stop And Frisk
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly enthusiastically defended the New York Police Department’s use of the controversial “stop and frisk” program during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning. Kelly went so far as to claim that more New Yorkers would die without the procedure in place.
Stop and frisk is a commonly used practice wherein NYC police officers question tens of thousands of pedestrians and may frisk them for weapons and contraband. The program disproportionately targets young black and Latino men, leading many to claim that it constitutes racial profiling — a view that was affirmed by federal judge Shira Scheindlin, who ruled the practice to be unconstitutional last week.
Host David Gregory asked Kelly if more Americans would die if the judge’s ruling — which Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (I) administration has already appealed — were to stand and the program be dismantled. Kelly replied, “No question about it, violent crime will go up,” before launching into a more extensive defense of stop and frisk premised on higher crime rates among minorities:
We need some balance here. The stark reality is that violence is happening disproportionately in minority communities. And that unfortunately is in big cities throughout America. We have record low numbers of murders in New York City, record low numbers of shootings, we’re doing something right to save lives. […]
This is something that’s integral to policing. This happens throughout America at any police jurisdiction. You have to do it. Officers have to have the right of inquiry, if they see some suspicious behavior. So I can assure you, this is not just a New York City issue. It’s an issue throughout America. And this case has to be appealed in my judgment because it will be taken as a template and have significant impact in policing throughout America.
In her ruling against stop and frisk, Scheindlin wrote, “[T]he policy encourages the targeting of young black and Hispanic men based on their prevalence in local crime complaints. This is a form of racial profiling.”
More than 5 million New York residents have been stopped and frisked under the program since Bloomberg took office in 2002. Over 86 percent of those who have been stopped are either black or Latino. But the mass random stops haven’t been particularly efficient — a staggering 4.4 million of New Yorkers who were targeted under the program, which cost taxpayer $22 million in civil rights lawsuits last year, were innocent.
There have also been incidents where a stop and frisk ends with deadly consequences. In March, overzealous NYPD officers shot and killed 16-year-old black male Kimani Gray after stopping him for “suspiciously” adjusting his belt. The NYPD claims that Gray had drawn a weapon on the officers — but eyewitness testimony disputes that account, and an autopsy revealed that several shots were fired from behind Gray.
That hasn’t stopped the Bloomberg administration from singing the practice’s praises. Bloomberg recently dismissed Scheindlin as “some woman” who knows “absolutely zero” about policing. “Your safety and the safety of your kids is now in the hands of some woman who does not have the expertise to do it,” he said during a radio interview Friday.
By: Sy Mukherjee, Think Progress, August 18, 2013
“Just Secede Already!”: Texas Asks Court To Nuke The Voting Rights Act, Forever
When the Supreme Court dismantled a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last June, there were two small silver linings in this decision. The first was the possibility that Congress could revive the regime killed by the Court, where states with particularly poor records of racialized voter suppression must “preclear” their voting practices with the Justice Department or a federal court before those practices can take effect. The second potential silver lining is Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows a state to be brought back under the preclearance requirement if a court finds that it engaged in “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief.”
Now, however, Texas wants to destroy these two silver linings as well. And there is a fair chance that the conservative Supreme Court will allow them to do so.
Late last month, the Justice Department joined a Section 3 lawsuit claiming that federal supervision of Texas’ election practices should be reinstated in light of very recent examples of intentional race discrimination by Texas. Among other things, a federal court found that Texas “consciously replaced many of [a] district’s active Hispanic voters with low-turnout Hispanic voters in an effort to strengthen the voting power of [the district’s] Anglo citizens.” These, the Justice Department explained, were “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment” justifying federal supervision.
Texas’ response to the Justice Department does not simply reject the idea that it should be subject to preclearance, it calls upon the courts to declare virtually any preclearance regime unconstitutional. According to Texas, the Supreme Court’s decision hobbling the Voting Rights Act “threw out Congress’s reauthorization of a preclearance regime because the legislative record failed to show ‘anything approaching the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that faced Congress in 1965, and that clearly distinguished the covered jurisdictions from the rest of the Nation at that time.’” In other words, Texas wants a federal court order saying that any effort to reinstate the Voting Rights Act in Texas is unconstitutional unless Texas transforms into Mississippi at the height of the Jim Crow era.
And they may very well succeed in getting this order. While Texas’ theory cannot be squared with the text of the Fifteenth Amendment — which provides that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and gives Congress “power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation” — it is not that hard to square with the Supreme Court’s recent decision. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion does indeed contain language suggesting that only something “approaching the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that faced Congress in 1965″ can permit a preclearance regime now. The fact that this language flies in the face of the Constitution is not likely to bother the five conservative justices who already signed onto it once.
As a final act of chutzpah, Texas also claims that it cannot be subject to preclearance because “Hispanic citizens in Texas registered to vote at higher rates” than Hispanics in other states not subject to federal supervision under the Voting Rights Act. That very well be true, but it’s also besides the point. The thrust of the Justice Department’s lawsuit is that Texas intentionally drew its district lines so that white votes would count more and Hispanic votes would count less. In other words, the whole purpose of these lines was to make sure that it didn’t matter if Hispanic voters registered at high rates because their voting power would still be diluted by gerrymandering. It’s like a basketball referee claiming that it doesn’t matter that he’s not counting all the points scored by one team because that team is taking more shots.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, August 9, 2013
“The Issues Are Real”: The Right Wing’s Ridiculous Outrage Of Ebony’s “Avatars Of Protest”
In the early 1930s, there was no black high school in John H. Johnson‘s native Arkansas City, Ark. This wasn’t atypical. The education of black children wasn’t a priority in many U.S. cities. In order to keep the family financially afloat, it would’ve made more sense for the future Johnson Publishing founder’s mother to send him to work full-time after eighth grade than to relocate to Chicago so that he could finish his secondary education. But relocate they did — and 68 years after Johnson first created it in 1945, we still have Ebony magazine.
Were it not for his mother’s foresight and for the fates conspiring in their favor, Johnson’s story could’ve ended in one of the mills and factories that employed so many black men of his era — including his father who was killed in a mill accident when he was a boy. Or he could’ve ended up a casualty of Jim Crow, a footnote filed under a racial profiling-related murder or an unjust imprisonment.
One different choice, one year’s delay, one miscalculated risk, and Ebony wouldn’t be available to us — at least not in the way we’ve come to know and rely on it for news and inspiration for over two-thirds of a century.
Johnson knew, as we do, how important his mission was, in publishing the premier periodical for black Americans. It became a brand whose political, social and economic impact has been paramount and, frankly, unmatched. We’ve turned to it for comprehensive coverage of every civil rights movement milestone, from protest to legislative shift to assassination. It was one of the only news outlets we trusted to share our unabashed joy at the election of a POTUS of color. It is where we turn to grapple with issues of crime, poverty and injustice, in a safe and trusted space. Ebony has been as much a news source as it’s been a family photo album, an artifact of comfort on our grandmothers’ coffee tables.
Though John H. Johnson passed away in 2005, Ebony continues to ensure his legacy, to archive our history, and to document our political unrest. It comes as no surprise that the magazine would not only pay tribute to the death of Trayvon Martin, but also use its considerable influence to make a powerful and unmistakable political statement. In publishing four commemorative “We Are All Trayvon” magazine covers for its September issue, Ebony is simply remaining as consistent a resource as it’s always been for us.
Regardless of our personal opinions about the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the black community has felt an acute sense of responsibility to the boy he killed. That boy is like too many others who have been gunned down prematurely, due to circumstances beyond their control. In Trayvon’s case, the circumstance was racial profiling. The circumstance was his being viewed as suspicious because of his profile in the dark. For prosecutors and a jury to ignore race as a precipitous factor in this case has been almost as unsettling as the fact that the teen was murdered in the first place.
This is what the hoodie movement has always been about. It’s a way of railing against the myriad biases and aggression imposed on minorities because of their skin color and other shallow markers of physical appearance. We who have been subject to these biases understand the importance of combating them in as public and high-profile a way as possible. We are Ebony’s audience — and those covers, featuring Trayvon Martin’s parents and brother, Jahvaris; filmmaker Spike Lee and his son, Jackson; NBA star Dwyane Wade and his sons, Zion and Zaire; and actor Boris Kodjoe and his son, Nicolas — are our public and high-profile avatars of protest.
Why anyone would take issue with a magazine responding to the needs and interests of its audience is a mystery — particularly since this has been Ebony’s primary objective since the 1940s.
But enter the right and its continued post-trial taunting and willful denial of racial profiling as a factor in Trayvon Martin’s killing. Conservative blog Twitchy and its commenters are registering their outrage over the covers, implying that Ebony is “pretend[ing] to fight for social justice.” The site is also quick to redirect attention from Trayvon’s murder to black-on-black crime. The lambasting continued on Twitter, as conservative account-holders called the covers “frankly racist.” In response the official Ebony account fired back. And a sardonic hashtag began to trend.
The “controversy” is absurd but the attitudes it reveals call for persistent and serious attention. We are as weary of hearing that Trayvon wasn’t killed because he was black as Tea Partyers are of seeing our hoodies. We wish this were a protest we didn’t have to undertake. But as long as the school-to-prison pipeline exists, as long as a judge can spend five years fraudulently sentencing black children to jail before his misdeeds are uncovered; as long as poverty and bureaucracy continue to ensure that the education of black children is not a priority; and as long as cases involving men opening fire on unarmed black youth occur, this will be a battle worth waging.
For us, Ebony’s “We Are All Trayvon” covers are not about tit-for-tat media coverage, reverse racism claims, or the detached outrage of an out-of-touch political party. This is urgent and personal. One different choice, one year’s delay, one miscalculated risk, and our black children could cease to exist. Someone who doesn’t like the look of them could follow them or instigate a confrontation or deem them unworthy of equitable opportunities or just wordlessly open fire.
These are our stakes. They do not begin or end with George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin or with hoodies and magazine covers. But if the story of John H. Johnson’s rise from poverty, through Jim Crow, and into our current media consciousness tells us anything, it’s that we can’t afford not to use every avenue available to us to fight for a more just society. We cannot afford to stop believing that, even against the unlikely odds of school disappearances in our communities and racial profiling and rampant gun violence, our voices and our media and our protests are meaningful. Here’s hoping Ebony remains in print and online long enough to report every stride we take toward a greatly improved future.
By: Stacia L. Brown, Salon, August 8, 2013
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