The Media's Role in a Nonviolent Movement: the Nashville Student Movement

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 361 740 CS 214 035 AUTHOR Sumner, David E. TITLE The Media's Role ina Nonviolent Movement: The Nashville Student Movement. PUB DATE Aug 93 NOTE 19p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting ofthe Association for Education inJournalism and Mass Communication (76th, KansasCity, MO, August 11-14, 1993). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) Historical Materials (060) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Activism; *Black Students;*Civil Rights; *Demonstrations (Civil);Higher Education; Journalism; Journalism History;*Mass Media Role; Racial Segregation; SocialAction; *Student Participation IDENTIFIERS *Media Coverage;Tennessee (Nashville) ABSTRACT StUdents from Nashville,Tennessee's four black higher educational institutions organized and carried outsit-ins at lunch counters of downtown department stores beginningFebruary 1, 1960. Theey wanted the lunch counters openedto customers of all races. The students usedpress coverage to convey the character of their movement. nonviolent Because their successdepended on public support, it was necessary touse the media to convey both their message--human justice andequality--and their nonviolent Because civil rights tactics. demonstrations were perceivedas being associated with violence, it was important forthe public to see that the students were its victims rather than its perpetuators.The morality play of the sit-ins was made-to-order for the media.The sympathetic treatment receivedby the studentswas not due to an inherently sympathetic, white-dominated media. Itfollowed a subtle, but predictable tendency in news mediacoverage to make events follow a predictable "storyline," completewith heroes, villains, and supporting actors, starring all resulting ina "good conquers evil" conclusion. Media coverage played a critical rolefor the Nashville students. Their commitment to nonviolence made *heirstory that much more appealing to a whitepress. (Eighteen references (RS) are attached.) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that,can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************** rs The Media's Role in a Nonviolent Movement: The Nashville Student Movement AEJMC History Division 1993 Convention, Kansas City by Prof. David E. Sumner Department of Journalism Ball State University Muncie, Indiana 47306 BEST COPY AVAII.ABLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research andImprovement 'PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 104,1his docur:ent hasbeen reproduced as received born tne person or organization originating it ..\'' ..N.stAcA', C Minor changes have been madeto improve reproduction quality Points z°eer or opinions stated in Mrs dOCu ment do not necessarily represent official OERI Position or policy TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES , INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)" The Media's Role in a Nonviolent Movement: The Nashville Student Movement by David E. Sumner "One of the things we did was we took time to talk to people in the media. We thought the media played a very important role; a necessary role," said Bernard Lafayette in recalling the success of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins in which he participated (Lafayette, telephone interview, March 20, 1989). The Nashville sit-ins began on Feb. 1, 1960, and ended on May 10 when the city's downtown department stores quietly opened their lunch counters to customers of all races. Students from Nashville's four black educational institutions--Fisk University, Tennessee A & I University (now Tennessee State), the American Baptist Seminary, and Meharry Medical College--organized and carried them out. After the first sit-in on Feb. 13, several more were conducted before student negotiators reached an agreement with merchants to begin integrating the lunch counters on May 10. (Sumner, 1988) Any discussion of the 1960 Southern student sit-in movement usually starts with the Greensboro sit-ins, which were the first to occur on Feb. 1. These began when four freshmen from North Carolina A & T College walked into a WoolwOrth's lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee. After the waitress refused to serve them, they remained until the store closed half hour later. Within two weeks after Greensboro, the sit-ins spread to Durham, Winston- Salem, Charlotte, Raleigh, Fayetteville and Elizabeth City, N.C.; Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia; Rock Bill, S.C.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Nashville, Tenn. By summer's end, sit-ins had occurred in 104 communities in 15 states. By the year's end, students had successfully integrated the lunch counters in 40 of these communities. (Oppenheimer, 1963) 1 3 The issue was a simple one: department stores that welcomed blacks to purchase merchandise but refused to serve them food at their lunch counters. The lunch counter, one student said, was a symbol that Ne aren't having it anymore. We're trying to eradicate the whole 2tigma of being Inferior. And another student said, "The sit-ins were a means of expressing something that had been in our hearts for a long time." (Doyle, 1985) Because they were the first to begin, the Greensboro sit-ins have been documented in two books and other articles. While scholars haven't ignored Nashville or other sit-ins, they have failed to note their scope, connection, and organizational base, as Aldon Morris (1984) points out. While the Greensboro sit-ins were largely spontaenous in their origin, Nashville students had been participating in workshops on nonviolence for two years and had conducted test sit-ins in downtown Nashville in November 1959. This article will demonstrate how the students used press coverage to convey the nonviolent character of their movement.Because their success depended upon public support, it was necessary to use the media to convey both 'their messagehuman justice and equalityEnd their nonviolent tactics. Because civil rights demonstrations were perceived as being associated with violence, they felt it W8R important for the public to see that the students were its -victims rather than its perpetuators. In so doing, this article will also point out that this morality play was made-to-order for the media. The sympathetic treatment received by the students was not due to an inherently sympathetic, white-dominated media. It followed a subtle, but predictable tendency in news media coverage to make events follow a predictable "storyline," complete with heroes, villains, starring and Eupporting actors, all resulting in a "good conquers evil" conclusion. 2 4 Literature Review Scholarly inquiry into media coverage of the civil rights movement has been sporadic and inconclusive. In a 1986 review of the literature, Martindale (1986) summarized the findings of the past thirty yecrs by saying that, "Only a few empirical studies of newspaper coverage of blacks in the years betw-en 1950 and 1970 have been done, and each of them illustrates some inadequacy of coverage." Breed (1958) compared coverage of the 1955 Eimett Till murder case in Mississippi by eleven newspapers, both northern and southern, black and white. Breed concluded that there were "some differences between North and South [newspapers], although the stereotyped expectations were not to be found." Only one newspaper, a small Mississippi daily, fit the stereotype of bias, he said. Carter (1957) analyzed news articles and editorials related to school desegregation from seven North Carolina dailies for two months in 1955. He concluded that Negroes. .and public school teachers rarely functioned as news sources, even though those two groups will be greatly affected by the outcome. Stories from Negro sources appeared on the front page only half as frequently as items from white sources; . moat of the pro-integration content comes from white souroea. Broom and Reece (1955) published a study of media coverage of the "Trenton Six" case, a trial of six blacks involved in a robbery-murder case in Trenton, New jersey. The case received extensive national attention during its three year-appeal in the early 1950s. They studied coverage by eight newspapers, including the New Ybrk Tines Los Angeles Times Pittsburgh Courier, three black-owned Western newspapers, and two Communist newspapers. EValuating the frequency of occurrence of "denial of civil rights," "racial discrimination," and "subversive contamination" themes, 3 C-, t.1 they found some differences in coverage, but not always the expected ones. For example, two of the black nempapers failed to report the case at all. Paletz and Dunn (1969) studied coverage of the race riots by the Winston-Salem Journal in that North Carolina city in November 1967.They concluded that the newspaper "attempted to reduce the racial issue" and went on to say The fact that Negroes were rioting was never mentioned in the headline and only occasionally in all the news accounts. The Journal presented the riot almost exclusively from the perspective of law enforcement and city officials. Little or no attempt was made to cover the stories from the perspective of those engaged in violence. A few books have been published about media coverage of the civil rights movement, and most of those came out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of those were proceedings of conferences and, conser!lently, lacked the depth and systemization of detailed historical study. For example, Race and the News Media (Fisher and Lowenstein, 1967) contains talks and presentations from a conference

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