My love affair with newspapers began when I was eleven years old. That was when My father married my stepmother who, while I lived with her, was the stepmother of fairy tales. At first she was sweet and affectionate, but she became insecure and abusive. Fortunately for me, she came with a wonderful family. After their marriage my father and I moved in with her at her sister Blanche and her brother-in-law David’s house. It was there that Uncle David introduced me to newspapers.
Everyday when he came home from his job at the Union Railroad, Uncle David sat on the couch and read the paper. Since I was a voracious reader of comic books, I soon joined him for this daily pursuit. I started with the comics, but Uncle David would make a comment about what MLK was doing in Birmingham or that Elvis had been drafted into the army, and soon I was reading the front page, the society page and sometimes even the editorials. This was a time for me to forget my stepmother’s insecurities and revel in the discussions Uncle David and I would have about world events. Even after we no longer live in the same house, our ritual of discussing the issues of the day continued.
Consequently, newspapers meant a great deal to me. They were not only an escape mechanism, but they also opened up a world to me beyond the slow paced river town in which I lived. I learned the power of the press to elucidate the evils of the time. As my education expanded, and I learned the role of the newspaper in American history, I was proud that my hometown papers reported on the changes occurring in our community and our nation. I felt they covered the racial turmoil in the South extensively. I learned about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the rise of Martin Luther King. I also learned about JFK and LBJ and their participation in expanding the opportunities for blacks in the South. I learned about Eisenhower and his sending the troops to protect the students at Central High. I learned about George Wallace standing in the doorway of the auditorium at the University of Alabama to bar Vivian Malone and James Hood’s entrance. I learned about Medgar Evers and Emmitt Till being slaughtered in Mississippi. I learned about James Meredith’s efforts to integrate the University of Mississippi and how he was shot on his march through Mississippi.
The companion to newspaper coverage was television news. I watched John Cameron Swayze and Walter Cronkite and The Huntley Brinkley Report and Meet the Press. I learned to love convention coverage. There was nothing more thrilling to me than to hear the roll call of states when the parties nominated their candidates for president. Some sonorous voice would call our “Mr. Chairman, the state of Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping through the plain, where corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, the home of Will Rogers and willing workers, etc, etc proudly casts its 17 votes to nominate Dan Jones for President (liberty taken for illustrative purposes). I saw the atrocity of the Kennedy assassination covered twenty-four hours a day for three days on televison. I saw Walter Cronkite tear up when he announced that Kennedy had died. I saw Lee Harvey Oswald killed live on television. I saw Jackie Kennedy with her blood–stained suit arrive back in Washington, I saw Jackie and Bobby make midnight visits to JFK’s coffin as he lay in state at the capital building. I saw JFK, Jr a toddler of three years old salute his father as the caisson rolled by.
All of this was shown on television and reported upon extensively in the newspapers. This was a time when the media was the media and not some big business conglomerate run for profit without regard to its mission . This was a time when the mainstream media lived up to the New York Times motto of reporting ”All the news that fit to print”. This was a time when the media lived up to its constitutional responsibilities of informing the citizenry so that the people would make the best decisions possible. To paraphrase Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar this was a media when come such another?
TO BE CONTINUED
