As featured in January 1998
The Best of Times
Reflecting the African-American Experience
By Carolyne S. Blount
After a quarter century as editor, it’s hard to settle on a handful of stories as “the best.” In some ways, I’ve enjoyed them all. Every feature or profile helps fill in a side of African-American history not often told. That’s what has kept us going.
Some might suggest we run a special reader’s poll. That is not necessary. Faithful subscribers always tell us what they most appreciate. They also provide some great leads. So, in the best tradition of our monthly publication, here are some insights into and reprints of about...time stories the staff and readers say are the best.
The Alex Haley cover story in the January 1977 issue was one of the most widely read pieces. It was the same month ABC aired “Roots,” a 12-hour television epic. At the time, we had no way of knowing the film would become the most highly watched program in history.
about...time’s coverage featured the viewpoints of two writers. Talik Abdul Basheer was troubled by the severe brutality and black acquiescence he discovered in Haley’s novel. The writer asked Alex Haley why didn’t his slave ancestor, Kunta Kinte, end his life rather than submit to having his foot cut off so he could never run away again. I’ll never forget Haley’s response. “If Kunta had resisted slavery more than he did, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said.
Valeria Elverton Dixon was thrilled to discover the strengths of people who somehow kept family and history intact and achieved success despite the odds. She was excited about tracing her own family history. Both articles displayed a sophistication in writing and depth of insight we had worked five years to acquire.
In the 1970s, the beginning years of the publication, feature stories were often more like extended community news coverage. Neither I nor most of the people who worked on the magazine were trained as journalists. We were more activists, convinced that it is important to have an alternative forum for blacks to learn about and discuss the people, places and events related to their lives. However, we developed some very powerful departments during the first years as reported in our feature story, “They Gave Their Best.”
A Looking Glass
We are very pleased with the extent of the magazine’s photographic coverage. The commitment and quality of the photographic works of our staff photographers and other professional documenters of history was so profound we also produced a number of feature stories on photo artists such as Gordon Parks, James VanDerZee, Chester Higgins Jr., Roland L. Freeman, Moneta Sleet Jr., and Morgan and Marvin Smith, as well as many others.
We were very excited when Parks and VanDerZee were recognized for their photography careers by the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology. It was a high point to have both of these immortal giants in one place at the same time. Our senior writer, Adolph Dupree, captured their life stories (January 1982). We subsequently produced several other stories on Gordon Parks because he was constantly developing new works — writing books, producing films, showcasing exhibitions, creating poetry, composing musical scores, and much more. There was always something fresh and different.
Freedom Fighters
The most memorable stories were those that allowed me to meet with activists from the earlier years of the civil rights movement. Whether profiling individuals or reporting on new publications and museum exhibitions, these powerful stories reflect how great minds worked together to “advance the race.”
Constitutional history and the legal experience that struck down Jim Crow laws is fascinating to me. The courageous acts of people who risked life and limb during the struggle are a constant source of hope.
I was totally awed upon meeting with Judge Constance Baker Motley, who serves on the federal judiciary of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She worked with Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for 20 years, 1945 to 1965. Her practice began during World War II, when she helped process hundreds of legal challenges for black servicemen facing court martial cases and other discrimination issues. Servicemen enrolled in unprecedented numbers as members of the NAACP during that time.
Not only was she guided by Marshall, he introduced her to his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, who was dean of the law school when Marshall attended Howard University. Houston founded the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and hired Marshall as his assistant before returning to private practice.
As the NAACP’s principal trial attorney, the cases argued by Motley were of key importance in securing equal rights for African Americans and bringing about the legal death of discrimination. She represented Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and obtained the release of jailed civil rights workers. She successfully defended James Meredith during the integration of the University of Mississippi. She ultimately argued 10 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and won 9 of them. Thirty years later, a case similar to the one she lost was eventually won with the same argument and strategy she used. Motley said she’s “batting a thousand!” I knew she was a great person but I didn’t know the extent of her personal history before producing the story.
There are so many others whom I enjoyed interviewing, observing their strength, absorbing their knowledge and strategies, and gathering information about how they persisted in spite of opposition. It took me 6 to 8 years to develop the story on Attorney Oliver Hill Jr., which by pure coincidence was being produced as a special “Justice Issue” around the same time that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall died. Dr. William J. Daniels, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology, wrote a very passionate tribute to this great American in that February 1992 issue.
As chairman of the Virginia State Conference of NAACP Branches during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, Oliver Hill headed up a team of lawyers who filed dozens of civil rights cases challenging segregation throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. He won the case for equal pay for equal work for black teachers. One of the cases in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case was produced out of his law firm in Richmond, Virginia.
Franklin H. Williams, another NAACP attorney who handled discrimination cases for the California branches, became the subject of a cover story examining “Africans in America” (July 1980). Williams later became ambassador to Ghana, then director of the Phelps Stokes Fund which supports educational initiatives in Africa.
Anyone who is blessed to be in the presence of Rosa Parks, considered the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” certainly can’t help but be deeply affected by her quiet calm and unassuming nature. However, the about...time story uncovered and confirmed information on her prior visit to the Highlander School in Tennessee, where many civil rights leaders were trained as organizers. We believe she was greatly impacted by the activism, energy, and commitment of the people she met during that visit.
We also reported on stalwarts such as union leader A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. I was at home during a college break when his union took responsibility for organizing the 1963 March on Washington. The experience was enlightening and uplifting.
Close-ups
For a period of about 10 years, our specialty was in-depth interviews with individuals who were community activists and who could help us prioritize critical issues affecting both black people and American society in general. Rev. Leon Sullivan was among the first interviewed. We learned about the economic development work of his church in Philadelphia and reported on the job training programs offered by OIC. He became the first black member of the General Motors Corporation Board of Directors, and implemented the Sullivan Principles for American-based companies to bypass the apartheid system while doing business in South Africa.
Likewise, we reported on the current work of other participants in the movement, such as M. Carl Holman, head of the National Urban Coalition and former Atlanta University English professor. Holman was a primary mentor to college students involved in the Civil Rights Struggle, such as Charlayne Hunter Gault (who integrated the University of Georgia and became a correspondent for the MacNeil Lehrer Report on PBS), and Marian Wright Edelman (who worked in the Mississippi Freedom Project and now heads the Children’s Defense Fund). He explained how you don’t need masses of people to implement change, just a small cadre of dedicated individuals whose integrity cannot be bought.
Over the years, we also interviewed many members of the Congressional Black Caucus as they tackled major issues. We documented the progress of Congressman Parren Mitchell and his work with the Small Business Administration to build legislation and set-asides that opened government contracts for minority businesses. Efforts to knock out those gains persist today.
Congressman William L. Clay (Missouri) was heavily involved in labor issues, dealing with workers rights and the protection of their pension/retirement funds. Harold Ford (Tennessee) was concerned with the impact of President Reagan’s budget on benefits for the elderly. George Crockett (Michigan) was challenging the State Department’s hiring practices, while John Conyers (Michigan) was leading health care reform issues.
As a freshman congressman, William H. Gray III (Pennsylvania) got legislation passed that created the African Development Foundation to deliver foreign aid to the grassroots, village level of African countries. He also worked to increase the numbers of minorities and women in the United States Foreign Service.
Shirley Chisholm chaired the Congressional Black Caucus and ran for president of the United States, long before Jesse Jackson’s presidential bid. Walter Fauntroy told us about his much-maligned Middle East trip to visit with the Palestine Liberation Organization. He also advocated home rule for citizens in the District of Columbia.
I guess you could say we had a heavy political tone over the years. During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, we conducted extensive interviews with all of his black appointees. They included Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander, U.S. Solicitor General Wade McCree, Secretary of Health and Human Services Patricia Harris, Bernadine Denning (Office of Revenue Sharing) and Percy Pierre (Undersecretary of the Army’s Research and Development Division).
Also, it was quite timely to obtain an interview with Eleanor Holmes Norton, Carter’s chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, just as the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Bakke decision.
We interviewed other people in the heat of battle, such as Faye Wattleton, who headed Planned Parenthood, and Mary Hatwood Futrell, president of the National Education Association during the height of discussions around educational reform. Both Wattleton and Futrell were constantly on television panels and had to hold their ground against great opposition from the Reagan administration and Right Wing opponents.
Ourstory
Other special features focused strongly on stories reporting on black history with the love and respect that it so richly deserved. We were so mesmerized by the black memorabilia collection of Dr. Thomas Bridge (February 1990) of Virginia State University that we wanted to report on his adventures as a collector of more than 2,000 historical pieces.
When Sharon McDaniel was assistant editor, she developed a very special report to celebrate the 90th birthday of Marian Anderson. The entire staff became caught up in the tremendous impact her life had on the work of black classical artists and other professional musicians in particular, and on opportunities for blacks in general. Mrs. Cynthia Fitzpatrick, our 113-year-old cover story subject (May 1980), was quite a lively centenarian. We thought it would be fascinating to see what kind of stories she could tell about her experiences throughout history. However, she didn’t want to talk about the past, because she was too busy living in the present. She was enjoying her friends at the Montgomery Neighborhood Center’s Senior Program and all the new adventures that came with the national attention received for her age.
The story was semi-sweet. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was from the tradition that too many of our families have fallen into — not wanting to speak about bad things that happened in the past because young people might become bitter. The old folks didn’t want young people to have to carry the burden of slavery and Jim Crow into the 20th century. However, I believe young people can find strength and courage in our history with powerful stories of survival and struggle.
We reported on the Louisiana Legend, Coach Eddie Robinson of Grambling University, back in November 1984, when he was within four years of the age for mandatory retirement. Some former students invited him to Rochester, New York. The story mentions many professional sports stars developed during his tenure as head football coach. Writer Adolph Dupree compared the stages of Coach Robinson’s career breaking new ground with the development of Sterling Brown’s poem entitled “Strong Men.” When the retirement laws changed, he continued to coach until forced into retirement this fall.
Every children’s issue has been fun to do, especially developing the cover stories. Using child models is always intriguing. Some were children of staff members, such as little Rhyadh Franklin reading books on our March 1997 cover; photographer Emmanuel Dokyi’s daughter, Amah Oye Dokyi, with the museum’s dinosaur exhibit (March 1991); newsstand distributor Curtis Robinson’s daughter, Kristin Robinson and circulation specialist Karla Nesbitt’s son, Cameron Nesbitt on the (March 1992) cover. Another was of children taking violin lessons at Hochstein School of Music (March 1990), and the very talented children from the Batoto Yetu dance troupe (March 1994), with their painted faces and African costumes.
A certain excitement comes with developing cover stories on up-and-coming future superstars before they become well-known, such as golfing sensation Tiger Woods and classical pianist Awadagin Pratt. It’s always good to be where a significant change occurs, such as when Mannie Jackson, a former player, became owner of the Harlem Globetrotters.
The magazine knuckled down to write many stories on the anti-apartheid movement and the work of members of the African National Congress, on demonstrations organized by Randall Robinson’s TransAfrica organization, as well as the struggle of Nelson Mandela. We also heard the voices of South Africans in exile such as Mariam Makeba and Zozo Stockton Laird. Coverage of the Black Diaspora also included stories on Zimbabwe, Angola, Sierra Leone, Mali, Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Egypt, Eritrea; as well as Haiti, Jamaica and the entire Caribbean region. We also included stories on the Fiji Islands and examined the work of Americans living in London, Paris, Russia, Japan and the Middle East.
Reporting black history facts and events is a mainstay of our editorial focus. We resurrect, expand, capture and highlight stories on black history. We’ve featured stories on museum exhibits, documentaries, films, books, plays and other works related to Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and treks along the Underground Railroad. We’ve recounted the history of the Buffalo Soldiers, Tuskegee Airmen, Negro Baseball Leagues, black migration to the North and endangered historic sites such as New York City’s African Burial Ground, the Penn Center in the South Sea Islands and the sunken slave ship, Henrietta Marie.
We’ve reported on blacks who helped build the Alcan Highway in Alaska, the development of the Black Holocaust Museum, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Baltimore’s Blacks In Wax Museum, Detroit’s new African American Museum, Mississippi’s Delta Blues Museum and the expansion of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
The number and variety of museums devoted to African and African-American history have grown tremendously during the 25 years we have published. Our stories have provided much to celebrate.
We reported on the historic campaign and election of Virginia’s Governor Douglas Wilder (October 1989) and Illinois’ Senator Carol Moseley-Braun (October 1992), as well as Rochester, New York’s Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. (February 1994).
Televised documentaries were always of interest, too. We discussed the organization of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union and the struggle of civil rights leader Ella Baker. We wrote about Fannie Lou Hamer, who was “tired of being tired” of racism, when she challenged the seating of Mississippi delegates at the 1964 Democratic convention.
We presented personalized health stories, such as Johnathan Hicks’ courageous fight against acute lemphoblastic leukemia (April 1995), and looked at the life and death challenges in trauma medicine with Dr. L.D. Britt (April 1995), medical director of the Eastern Virginia Medical System/Sentra Norfolk General Hospital Shock Trauma Center. We also explored aerobics and bodybuilding techniques, as well as alternative medicine with hands-on healing therapy and herbal treatments.
We still have fun developing stories on chefs, caterers, restaurant owners, food manufacturers, soul food and Caribbean dishes, cookbook authors, as well as general articles about the joys of family gatherings around the kitchen table.
Among the most memorable were Chef Roy Holman, who managed a corporate cafeteria; Chef Leah Chase of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant with its Creole cooking traditions in New Orleans, and B. Smith’s restaurants in New York City and Washington, D.C. On February 4, 1998, Macmillon publishing house is scheduled to release the new cookbook by Chef Joe Randall (our August 1997 cover story), entitled “A Taste of Heritage: The New African-American Cuisine.”
Fun and frolic has been sprinkled among our pages with stories on children’s summer activities, African-American games and puzzles, and the humor of comedians.
Exceptional People
We reveled in the extraordinary work of Lena Horne and Nancy Wilson, leading interpreters of American song. We chanted with Bernice Reagan Johnson and Sweet Honey In the Rock, and joined women of the Akoma choir for their anniversary celebration. We swayed to the sounds of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie and Ramsey Lewis, as well as the music rendered by Nate Rawls’ Big Band. We admired the work of jazz purist Danny Barker and his New Orleans music legacy.
We celebrated the works of literary giants such as Toni Morrison, Amari Baraka, Alice Walker and Maya Angelou, as well as the soulful new writers of mystery, romance, biography, historic memoirs and reference works. We have explored the artistic insight of Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, as well as illustrators of children’s books and black history calendars.
We celebrated the introduction of new products such as Marshall Johnson’s African-American Heritage Check Series that recognizes the power in black dollars, and the launching of Denise Allen Wicks’ Sissy Pooh™ children’s clothing line that can make every child look like royalty.
We were also around to report on Spike Lee’s first film effort, “She’s Got to Have It,” and take you behind-the-scenes and into the producer’s mind. Pieces on his other works include a cover story about his film on Malcolm X, right up to Lee’s production of “Get On the Bus.”
We were there when figure skater Debbie Thomas and track and field star Jackie Joyner-Kersee competed in the Olympics, as well as when Wynton Marsalis won Grammys in both the classical and jazz categories.
We soared through the air with the poly-rhythms of the Bottom of the Bucket dance troupe. We covered its evolution into the internationally acclaimed Garth Fagan Dance . In the same sense as former House Speaker Tip O’Neil said “All politics is local,” we believe that all great stories are local. They have a local beginning and connection in them that we acknowledge and see the value of. Thus, a major emphasis of our publication is not to forget the people at the community level who champion their people and help them regain control over their lives. The profile of Mrs. Viola Marshall in this issue provides an example of the quality of this reporting.
We’ve featured Jim Brown’s work to rehabilitate former street gang members, Byllye Yvonne Avery’s work to address African-American women’s health issues, and Dr. Lorraine Hale’s continuation of the work of Mother Hale, helping drug addicted and HIV infected babies and their mothers at the Hale House Center.
We’ve reported on local community champions such as Juanita Brown, who chairs the Prison Family Bus Service that helps families visit relatives who are inmates in prison, and Betty Marion Anderson’s work on multicultural projects to broaden the education of school children and their teachers as well as the community. She attended the African and African American Summit sponsored by Dr. Leon Sullivan’s organization that was held in Zimbabwe this past summer.
Parting Thoughts
There have been many inspiring human interest stories of people rebuilding their lives:
about...time is best when it puts the spotlight on previously invisible individuals who perform essential and sometimes mundane tasks. We invite our readers to reflect a moment with us as we continue to celebrate the strength and joy in black life!
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