Gene Roberts, Hank Klibanof. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of America. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2006. 489 pp. $30.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-679-40381-4.

Reviewed by Jeanette McVicker

Published on Jhistory (April, 2007)

The Race Beat appears at a crucial moment Carnegie Corporation report "An American Dilem‐ for considerations of the history of race and rep‐ ma: The Negro Problem and Modern America" resentation in the United States and of the often (1944) as a critical point of departure for their pri‐ contradictory role played by the national news mary organizing focus: the power of the press to media in covering it. Authors Gene Roberts and "publicize" the system of legal segregation in the Hank Klibanof--each of whom has logged report‐ United States. The term was used by Swedish ing time in the south, Roberts doing so during the economist and statesman Gunnar Myrdal, com‐ Civil Rights era--painstakingly record the stories missioned by Carnegie's board to "conduct a com‐ of the black and white journalists who, in the prehensive study of race in America, and especial‐ years following World War II, focused the nation's ly of segregation and white supremacy in the attention on the myth of "separate but equal" South," as a scholar from a country without the through the frequently riveting coverage of taint of colonialism or "a history of domination" blacks' struggle for full legal integration. The (p. 7). Roberts and Klibanof's decision to adopt book, which has won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in this particular framework for their narrative is history, reminds readers living in a media-saturat‐ certain to generate tremendous debate as the ed age what it was like for journalists to realize book enters the contemporary discourse on race, the awesome power the press held to inspire not least because of the controversial reception of change. the Carnegie report among black intellectuals Roberts, former national editor for the New from the moment it appeared and particularly af‐ York Times and current professor of journalism at ter 1965. the University of Maryland, and Klibanof, who Shocked by the conditions he witnessed in the spent twenty years at the Philadelphia Inquirer South in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Myrdal before becoming managing editor for news at the "concluded that there was one barrier between Atlanta Journal-Constitution, take the landmark the white northerner's ignorance and his sense of H-Net Reviews outrage that the [American] creed was being poi‐ United States fnding itself in an international po‐ soned. That barrier was knowledge, incontrovert‐ sition of moral leadership following the end of ible information that was strong enough, graphic World War II, a war that the black press had gen‐ enough, and constant enough to overcome 'the erally struggled to support given that it was opportunistic desire of the whites for ignorance'" fought with segregated armed forces. The myth of about the horrifc conditions codifed through American equality unraveled rapidly as the stag‐ post-Reconstruction legislation (p. 6). Roberts and gering humiliations sufered by black soldiers re‐ Klibanof laud Myrdal's "uncannily prescient con‐ turning to their own country after fghting for clusion," namely that "to get publicity is of the others' freedom became broadly known. highest strategic importance to the Negro peo‐ Early chapters help defne the period be‐ ple" (emphasis in original, p. 6). They write: tween the end of World War II and the landmark "More remarkable than the study's impact Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Educa‐ was its foresight. The coming years would prove, tion (1954), noting the critical contributions the time and again, the extraordinary connection be‐ black press made in covering the growing brutali‐ tween news coverage of race discrimination--pub‐ ty, such as lynching, used to undo political and licity, as Myrdal called it--and the emerging economic accomplishments from the Reconstruc‐ protest against discrimination--the civil rights tion era. Violence and white supremacist terror‐ movement, as it became known. That movement ism had resulted in the almost total disenfran‐ grew to be the most dynamic American news sto‐ chisement of blacks in the deep South. The book ry of the last half of the twentieth century.... From proceeds mostly chronologically, developing the the news coverage came signifcant and enduring role of the national press as it found its focus, ex‐ changes not only in the civil rights movement but pressed most often in coverage of legal challenges also in the way the print and television media did to segregation then circulating through the courts, their jobs. There is little in American society that particularly in regard to public facilities and espe‐ was not altered by the civil rights movement. cially schools. And it draws a sharp contrast be‐ There is little in the civil rights movement that tween the almost total neglect of black life in the was not changed by the news coverage of it. And big northern dailies (except, as Myrdal's report there is little in the way the news media operate puts it, as "crime news" [p. 5]) and the black that was not infuenced by their coverage of the press's struggle to expose the oppression blacks movement" (p. 7). experienced while still depicting black identity in Drawing on oral histories, personal inter‐ non-pathological terms. The trial surrounding views, doctoral dissertations, and master's theses fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, to which the au‐ in conjunction with more traditionally sourced in‐ thors devote an entire chapter, captured the com‐ formation in books, periodicals, and archives (the plexity of such eforts. "The story of the Chicago source lists in the appendix are extensive and kid visiting his mother's uncle in the late summer timely for journalism historians), the book reveals of 1955 and the trial of the two white men ac‐ that the coverage--frst in the pages of a vibrant cused of beating him, shooting him in the head, black press with a tradition dating to the 1820s, and ditching him in a river with a seventy-pound then in the pages of the reluctant mainstream cotton gin fan tethered to his neck with barbed (white) press, and subsequently on network tele‐ wire" represented a "signifcant journalistic mile‐ vision--did expose the shocking reality of black stone" (p. 86), the authors say. Till's horrifc death life in America, at least as it existed in the rural and the funeral in Chicago, which displayed the South. It did so in the immediate aftermath of the boy's broken body in an open casket, "brought Ne‐ gro reporters into the heart of the white man's

2 H-Net Reviews kingdom--the courtroom." It also brought "white stopped" (p. 156). For students of journalism, par‐ reporters into the Deep South in unprecedented ticularly, this book should be required reading. numbers to cover a racial story" (p. 86). The au‐ The Race Beat has already generated copious thors quote Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, who said at praise since it appeared at the end of 2006. With a the time, "the killers of the boy felt free to lynch consistency worth noting, the reviews have begun him because there is in the entire state no re‐ to form a kind of parallel narrative, headlined straining infuence, not in the state capital, among something like the Christian Science Monitor's: the daily newspapers, the clergy nor any segment "Mainstream journalism in the U.S. was late to the of the so-called better citizens" (quoted, p. 88). civil rights story--but powerful when it fnally ar‐ The book's primary contribution to journal‐ rived"; or the Columbia Journalism Review's "The ism history is arguably in its foregrounding the Desegregation Drama: the white news media stories of a core of white liberal southern editors, came late to the scene. But when they did arrive, key players in this history. These editors--Harry the battle was joined."[1] Ashmore in Charlotte, and later in Little Rock; What reviewers have thus far failed to men‐ Ralph McGill in Atlanta; Hodding Carter Jr. in tion, however, is that when the mainstream press Greenville, Mississippi; Buford Boone in fnally did come to the story, it tended to oversim‐ Tuscaloosa; Lenoir Chambers in Norfolk; Bill Bag‐ plify what might have been a vibrant and com‐ gs in Miami; Hazel Brannon Smith in Lexington, plex, even if conficted, debate about the emer‐ Mississippi--"would write and speak with the gence of "American identity" in terms of the social proselytic power and majesty of the newly con‐ constructedness of race, its imbrication with the verted. While each had local issues to tackle edito‐ status of women, and most of all, the shifting op‐ rially, they could be relied on to push for national eration of capital within the geopolitical frame‐ unity, obeying federal law, and rising above re‐ work of the Cold War. The questioning of racial gionalism" (pp. 24-25). Roberts and Klibanof (and gendered) representation in culture, politics, transform the litany of signature events and head‐ and labor had already been taking place, however lines of the times into a compelling daily human unevenly, in various ways in the black press since drama, bringing the reporters and editors and Reconstruction. Frederick Douglass, for example, their subjects into sharper focus. Their meticu‐ conceptualized early versions of the issue in his lously documented interviews and archival inves‐ work for the North Star (1847-51) as did David tigations deliver a living chronicle that injects Walker in his Appeal during the Missouri Compro‐ fresh perspective on a history, from the Brown de‐ mise debates of 1829-30. The Race Beat praises the cision to the events of Little Rock, Birmingham, important work performed by the black press, and Selma, that we thought we already knew. One particularly after World War II, but generally does particularly chilling moment involves NBC's John not discuss the agonized dialogue that had al‐ Chancellor, deep in the Mississippi Delta, in the ready been going on for a century regarding the process of obtaining reactions to the 1956 verdict establishment of black cultural identity as posi‐ in the Till trial, who "immobilized" an angry mob tive and self-fulflling. The mainstream press by holding up the tiny microphone to his tape merely cast the issue as "the Negro problem," i.e, recorder as if it was "the technological equivalent the pathological darkness haunting white Ameri‐ of a crucifx" (p. 156). Terrifed, he "blurted out, 'I ca's achievement of "progress." don't care what you're going to do to me, but the More pertinent to the historical moment un‐ whole world is going to know it.' The men der discussion in the book is the way issues of black American identity and agency surfaced in

3 H-Net Reviews the magazines and journals associated with the mainstream almost exclusively in negative terms, Harlem Renaissance, including Crisis and Oppor‐ a "problem" to be legislated. tunity. Such issues also appeared in literature by Yet, other visions of black identity and demo‐ black, white, and women writers and poets, as cratic practice had competed for discussion in the well as the journalistic forums and publications crucial period between World War II and 1965, in‐ associated with the labor movement and the Com‐ cluding a striking review of Myrdal's study for the munist Party between the wars. By focusing on Carnegie Corporation by Ralph Ellison, whose In‐ achievement and uplift, rather than pathology, visible Man (1952) won the National Book Award the Harlem Renaissance attempted to counter the in 1953. "An American Dilemma: A Review" was negative constructions of black identity and cul‐ written in 1944, the year the Carnegie report ap‐ ture that had largely come through the national peared, although Ellison chose not to publish it media. for another twenty years. (It appeared in the col‐ Circumscribing its coverage of racial issues to lection Shadow and Act, published by Random the legislative drama over institutional integra‐ House in 1964.) Ellison's opening paragraphs sig‐ tion, the mainstream press thus tended to repro‐ nal a very diferent perspective from the one em‐ duce the blind spots regarding race and represen‐ braced by the report and its underwriters at the tation that had kept blacks out of the national eye prestigious Carnegie Corporation: in the frst place, or had, minimally, allowed them "Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma is into that line of vision primarily as a "problem" to not an easy book for an American Negro to re‐ be resolved. Myrdal's report reinforced this nar‐ view. Not because he might be overawed by its row frame of reference by advocating the "publi‐ broad comprehensiveness; nor because of the cizing" of blacks' victim status so that northern sense of alienation and embarrassment that the whites would pay attention and advocate for the book might arouse by reminding him that it is eradication of Jim Crow laws. necessary in our democracy for a European scien‐ By choosing to position their history frmly tist to afrm the American Negro's humanity; not within this liberal tradition, Roberts and Klibanof even because it is an implied criticism of his own also tend to reproduce a narrative paradigm that Negro social scientists' failure to defne the prob‐ U.S. journalism seemed determined to cast itself lem as clearly. Instead, it is difcult because the within in order to justify its departure from the book, as a study of a social ambiguity, is itself hallowed tradition of objectivity. (See, for exam‐ so...ambiguous... ple, the authors' discussion of the resignation of In our society it is not unusual for a Negro to CBS's Howard K. Smith after network board chair‐ experience a sensation that he does not exist in man William S. Paley questioned his "editorializ‐ the real world at all. He seems, rather, to exist in ing" in the conclusion of a piece on Freedom Rid‐ the nightmarish fantasy of the white American ers in Birmingham [p. 252].) While these journal‐ mind as a phantom that the white mind seeks un‐ ists deserve well-earned praise for their frequent ceasingly, by means both crude and subtle, to lay acts of courage and passionate advocacy for to rest....He locates the Negro problem 'in the change, the liberal vision of democracy becomes heart of the [white] American...the confict be‐ the real hero of this story. What is lauded as the tween his moral valuations on various levels of golden age of journalism in galvanizing the na‐ consciousness and generality.'... tional will to end a system of racial apartheid, can For the solution of the problem of the Ameri‐ also be seen, perhaps ironically, as the moment can Negro and democracy lies only partially in when black identity entered into the national the white man's free will. Its full solution will lie

4 H-Net Reviews in the creation of a democracy in which the Negro Journalism historians who wish to amplify will be free to defne himself for what he is and, their reading would do well to start with Todd Vo‐ within the large frame-work of that democracy, gel's edited collection, The Black Press: New Liter‐ for what he desires to be...." (Shadow and Act, p. ary and Historical Essays (2001), which provides 303). a rich companion volume for refecting on the his‐ According to Shari Cohen, in a 2004 report for tory of the role of the black press in a variety of the Carnegie Corporation, marking the fftieth an‐ venues. Recent works on race by historians such niversary of the Brown decision and the sixtieth as Robin D. G. Kelley (especially in Race Rebels anniversary of the Myrdal report, Ellison's argu‐ [1994]), cultural critics such as Paul Gilroy (espe‐ ment "foreshadowed the criticism that the book cially in Against Race [2000]), and feminist critics would receive from black intellectuals in the late such as Robyn Wiegman (especially in American 1960s."[3] The fnal chapter of The Race Beat, "Be‐ Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender [1997]), yond," summarizes the fragmentation of unifed to name only a few texts that provide important national purpose regarding the question of race dialogic counterpoint to Roberts and Klibanof's in post-1965 America, marking the irony of Watts historical focus, add multiple levels of nuanced exploding in anger that year, just fve days after critical analysis to our understanding of the Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. press's discussion of race. Such contrasts presaged what the press would, The Race Beat appears at a complex moment from that point on, consistently term the new of a now-globalized discourse on race. Roberts "militancy" of the movement. Yet a critique of the and Klibanof contribute a remarkable work of premises upon which the legislative integration journalistic research that clearly flls a gap in the that had formed the backbone of the civil rights historical record of the Civil Rights era in the Unit‐ movement was constructed had roots in those ed States, yet reading the meticulously researched frst contributions by blacks to the history of jour‐ narratives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, nalism (i.e., in work by Douglass, Walker, Ida B. the spontaneous marches by thousands of immi‐ Wells-Barnett, and others). Roberts and Klibanof grants protesting immigration reforms, or the war trace the post-1965 turn in mostly negative terms, on terrorism and coverage of Muslims in America, noting the shift in both rhetoric ("black power") raises still-difcult questions concerning repre‐ and tactics (the use of violence if necessary) em‐ sentation that are at the heart of American jour‐ braced by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating nalistic practice. Committee (SNCC); the rise of black nationalism in Notes speeches by Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and [1]. Review in the Christian Science Monitor others; and, above all, the sudden change in the by Michael O'Donnell (January 9, 2007); review in way in which the white, mainstream press was the Columbia Journalism Review by David K. now treated by those making news. This "dramat‐ Shipler (November/December 2006). ic reversal" in the status of white reporters cover‐ ing the movement is crystallized in an emblemat‐ [2]. Ralph Ellison, "An American Dilemma: A ic quote by Karl Fleming, Los Angeles bureau Review," in Shadow and Act (New York: Random chief, at the time, for Newsweek: "To blacks in the House, 1964): 303-317. South, I was one of the good guys...To blacks in [3]. See "The Lasting Legacy of An American Watts, I was just another faceless, exploitative Dilemma", published at the Carnegie Corporation whitey, someone to hate, and hurt" (quoted, p. website: http://www.carnegie.org/results/07/in‐ 396). dex.html.

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Citation: Jeanette McVicker. Review of Roberts, Gene; Klibanof, Hank. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of America. Jhistory, H-Net Reviews. April, 2007.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13106

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