Pioneer of Color: Conversation with Mal Goode

Tell us how to become violent with your powers like the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of the last people are the other good first week. Just good Ribisi news on the didn't really feel free. The United Nations. Now this is a wonderful opportunity to be able to talk to you about your career as an ABC correspondent just to get some background on you I'd like to for our viewers to find out about your humble beginnings. First Doris it's a real joy to see you again and remembering some of the things you went through as a woman and as a black. When you got into television but. I'm pleased to do this because I feel it might

help somebody to understand what it was like. Being a Nigro in television 30 30 35 years ago even in network radio because so many doors were closed to us. Some are still close but. When I go to the background I have to think about grandparents who were slaves and I didn't know them only by history. I knew them personally and my father used to send my two older brothers and one summer we'd go to our paternal grandparents and Southfield Virginia and another summer would go to our maternal grandparents over in Stockton for do you know one of the things that you've said about your your grandfather in particular. He worked in the still steel mill so I dropped out of school to support his family. You worked in the still one of the things that I think you said about your grandfather is that he galvanized you what did you mean by that.

He galvanizes against what he knew we were going to face first he didn't want us to feel we were better than those they didn't have ghettos the manse and the it was in the second ward. That's where the poor girls lived and what not but. He didn't want us to feel that we were better we live real well when you think in terms of the homestead across the river from Pittsburgh a little steel town where my father worked in the mill and so did I later on but he did want us to feel we were better than somebody else but he also didn't want us to feel anyone else was better than you. He say you know better than anybody else and nobody else is any better than you. You see Doris I've never sat under a black teacher in my life not that's not something I'm proud of. The fact was that they didn't hire any black teachers in Homestead Pennsylvania even when I got to the University of Pittsburgh in 1927 they didn't hire any professors neither heads of departments and but somebody made that possible. You could very easily have gone the same way not have completed school not

have gone on to do what you did that you had a determination to make it came from mom and pop because they had a deep abiding faith in God Almighty. They believed that someday these things are going to change it. They had a famous expression Dorsenne won't always be this way. You I felt that morning and I signed a contract with raggedy in September the 10th 1862. This is what they did. When you look at what children have to face today and I know you are really near and dear to your heart what do you see as the future for them. If I don't see it it doesn't look good at all for white nor black because the family is broken down almost completely and certainly the Blackman. When you think about in 1970 there was something like 45 percent of black families headed by women and now it's up to about 60 percent. The children children particularly who are raised in sand they have nobody to guide them they have no father.

You see when you when I was coming up as a 10 12 13 year old you my father would tell you in a minute you know it aired. This is my house you know and you get to the place where you don't want to hear your mother you don't want to hear me. There he was on the front door and he meant that. But he also had a rule and you know what the rule was it wouldn't hit you knocking you down from time to time. But he only spoke to you once. The same deep abiding faith in God was drilled into us over and over you know Doris night Saturday night all Sunday with my father didn't shovel any snow he had three shovels in the garage in the back of a lot of research. That's what you get up to about 6 o'clock of with snow on your shovel snow till about 8 13 Your came in you got washed and because you took a bath on Saturday night and you got washed and you all six of us and mother and father got down on our knees to leave and he's thanking God for what he did for us during and for all of us during the present week and the past week.

You protected me in front of those hot furnaces and protected my wife and my children that kind of thing. So you got a feeling of power somewhere else besides yourself and that was grounded to us and that's lacking today as a world without a doubt a child a child doesn't get that we have nobody telling the difference between right and wrong. Forcing it done not many of them don't know who their fathers are and if they do or their fathers are narcotics so their fathers are runnin after somebody else's wife and that kind of thing. So the children don't have much by way of example but I came up in a time when children had an example in the household and he was papa he was daddy and he was the boss. Make no mistake. Let's talk about that after you left the steel mill. You want to go to law school. But you didn't. Depression thing. I hope you never see it's getting like that no. But I would hope that this country would never get the kind of depression we had in those days you know welfare and whatnot you you made it. You worked for I worked for eight dollars a week

as a janitor in a Richard Roth It's called the store took the job 13 months after I got my degree at the University of Pittsburgh and stayed there for five years and in 1936. But when you think in terms of that going along and you have a lot of a lot of people lose heart they say what's the use and when you get to the place where you have the attitude of what's used you you give but you're paying a price for that. You said when we talked earlier that one of the best jobs you ever had in life was working for the y the way when you were an ABC network correspondent I mean working for the Y was better than that. The only difference is the money that's the only reason I ever left. I had over 600 boys coming in and out of that building in a week's time from the Pittsburgh area because the seated many of the Young Men's Christian Association was not. We had a colored YMCA that's what the SAE meant for us. We would use that regularly.

And I had no hope of being the boy's words director at East Liberty why with my boys couldn't go there except at athletic contests. But I had an opportunity to tell them you are going to be somebody. You have to be somebody. You come across those doors and registry. And I taught them some things that even they didn't get it like respect for each other and you wouldn't dare use a curse word in the billiard room in the swimming pool under any circumstances because that meant automatically two weeks out. So you instilled in them some of the very things that your grandparents about and I still don't you. When your father passed it right on to them tried the best I could and some of those fellows many of them many of them are living now. My children three of them live in Pittsburgh and. One of the doctors still won't take a fee from Dr. William Miller who is.

66 now. But I know I met him when he was 14. Now in 1948 you joined the Pittsburgh Courier which was the largest black newspaper at that time. How did you get that job. Well I had a heart attack in the 50s and you know I was managing a housing project and they had a heart attack and and the doctor said I couldn't work for you. So I was in and out of the hospital for two months and when I begin to come back and said Your man who owned a Korea said you can come you have to lift anything heavier than a pencil and you feel like traveling. Did you feel awkward because they wanted me to travel to build circulation to be an assistant to the circulation and that was a great I stayed with him 14 years and that job led you into radio you had a radio with forty seven forty forty eight forty nine television began to come in and many advertisers were taking their money out of radio and putting it in the television

and QVC had a 15 minute slot open every Tuesday and Wednesday night 10:00 to 10:15. They offered the time to the Pittsburgh Mrs. Vand asked me if you could speak fairly well if I would like to do it and I said she would. What kind of things that you talk about. We talked about principally about the race problem principally about bigotries Prince related I think wait a minute. You went on the radio. Oh you're not going to. Yeah but you know I would do such a rating that listenership and we were able to advertise a symbol of the Korea it's classified ad section and whatnot and gave us terrific reader a list of newest listenership. And as a result of that. After six months he said to the. That's very good here you know we we want you to pay for the time for us. So we had a conference bill Nunn Sr. was a managing editor and Mrs. Vand who owned a courier

and they asked me what I thought about I said I don't see any reason as in My sister has a program over across the river. Mary D. H o d which is she had four hours of Negro programming that's what ricotta did and Prince of religious music and we talked to management over there and adding a new show. So I took your speaks we took it to the station WABE seven miles away. The five minute program from 3:00 to 3:15 and afternoon and in no time it grew to 15 minutes. Your sister or brother sister brother sister only brother sister team in the country at that time. Then from the radio you know I'm thinking about the time frame because when you actually went into television you were 54 years old. That's when folks start thinking about retiring and why not. That's exactly right. You know were you thinking about retiring on know how good you were what what chances did you had

to accumulate any money where you could retire at 54 55 or 60 65 years they just kept working and whatnot. You didn't you didn't get to have an income. Black Americans Afro-Americans Negro Americans call us what you will but you didn't have those kinds of opportunities and that's what irks me even now when you think in terms of discrimination in employment and whatnot in 98 and you would just not be not that is absolutely it is it's it's not as prominent in many ways as it was in the old days but it's there it's plain and simple and ask anybody who's black who's working somewhere and if they're honest with you they'll tell you this is what bothers me and I wouldn't want to miss saying this. But as with with with the group I called the Arrive negro quote unquote. You live among the best of them over here. Good. Who will participate in the end they don't go to a black church. They're not concerned about

our welfare. About tomorrow for their children. It bothers me no. Now how did you meet Jackie Robinson. Well I met him in a dressing room and when he first came to play in Pittsburgh but I had no chance to knowing intimately. Then when the picture came in the Jackie Robinson story which he played up his own part in the when it came to play in Pittsburgh the management asked me to come down and introduce him they knew about me being with a friend he was with and that's when we really became close and we got a matter of every time he came to town he would go out to the house and ofttimes would call me and say mouths pick me up this afternoon and I would just want to talk with him. I just pick him up and I would go out with Mary and have you have brunch and whatnot discussing problems that affected Nigro people in this country. He was as much interested is as any person in the country in the welfare of me by that time. King wasn't even on

the scene. I'm talking about in nineteen forty nine thousand nine hundred fifty fifty one fifty two you know still a lot of tension and some still had put anybody black on. On their respective teams that was in baseball but like ways they hadn't put them in others positions as well as it should have been done a long time before. Well it was as a result of your friendship with Jackie that you ended up at ABC is that correct absolutely exactly how that happened. Well they had a fellow named Harvey Cosell I don't even know their name. We didn't we didn't get along too well but he is basically a decent fella but how he used to have Jackie over as a guest many times and and he must have said to Jim Haggerty The vice president ABC that he was going to be a guest was going to take over the program. So Haggerty went over to see the meeting.

So Jackie said to him you know what's wrong with this place. I've been over it two or three times and I want to see grows we don't use the term black. I saw a lady downstairs with a white uniform on and I saw Norman. And haggard his face got red and stern and he said you know we were thinking about that he said well you gotta stop thinking about and you ought to do it it's nine teens 61. That was in November. He said Would you help us he said well I'll do what I can but you have a lot of money you can be so certain. You said I've met a lot of black fellows on Radio St. Louis in St. Louis in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in New Orleans what name named. And so he called all of us and told us not just me that General Haggerty was looking for a black newsman and when he didn't call me he came to Pittsburgh to speak in McKeesport of a name with so many contributions by the growth over the years that I

young people know very little about and I picked him up at the airport that morning you came out and had breakfast with that Sunday morning followed him and on our way back he told me about the situation. Just talk with him a couple months before but he didn't believe he was going. Going to hire anybody but so I contacted Peggy Haggerty invited me up and now you auditioned in front of about 14 executives from 80. Well that's that was kind of the audition Well the. That was April when I went to see him and I didn't hear anything he said caught me in about a month. I called we said we had made up my mind yet were talking to some other people. So I got this letter on 30 first of July in 1960 to say we've reduced the number to eight out of 30 and we're going to have here you're going to have auditions Monday Tuesday Wednesday like first second third of whatever it was.

Now we're all 30. Oh yes all of that no women incident. Oh OK. We're coming later. So I picked a day and I went up and I went in the newsroom and of course the word had gotten out that ABC may hire a negro news man and so he took the end of the nose. What a shock a little bit. I said I want to chuckle a little too I said. Jim could I use one of these typewriters in the news and you know the press. So I said then he said sure. So I was in about two hours with you know because I learned how to type in high school and it looked at me like I was some kind of freak and so he said we're going to test it five o'clock. This was about one o'clock and I stayed in a couple hours. You were writing why are rewriting Why are you not why are you rewriting stories and he said well we've got some hard five minutes of what they call hard copy for you to use and it's on a teleprompter I said well why don't

I have my own. He's the man who later became president of ABC News came down the said you did very well and of course Jim Haggerty was he what you mean is I don't think I was. Maybe it's wrong for me to say that but I really don't think I was. I had made up my mind that it was going to come sooner or later and if it didn't come I'd had disappointments before you get accustomed. You get adjusted to disappointments when you live like I believe Did you see doors closed in your face and walk into a restaurant they say we don't serve colored here not in Mississippi but in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania you couldn't go I couldn't state that we in those days but I live long enough to speak in Erbil. This is the God I believe in. If you I'm not apologizing for it it's just that these things take place and you have to have some. Some confidence that it will take place that's why I'm nervous. No no no. I forget the question suggest me some time because I want to underscore the fact that of how

I got there it wasn't only Jackie Robinson It was black preachers preach and sermons on Sunday about no black screen and network television news or in television at all. And the fact that so many youngsters are out there that were capable of doing it. So you're got a job and your first assignment was well the first assignment was to interview and it was a shaky and the ambassador from Iran Incidentally you my man I was working with the United Nations. That's a long story but I just touched on it they put me at the United Nations for training because Jackie had said don't don't put it someplace where you run into trouble because you're going to take anything when you're one of those outspoken near. That's right and you weren't going to call me nigger and walk away with with it. I was taught better but Jackie made that clear so they thought maybe they better put you in with John McCain where you might get four or five good stories in a year's time. So what here.

Yeah. What training am I going to get John was a nice father is dead and gone and I still have to work with and whatnot but it was set in order cause deaths from one another and but God works. They say you mama grandma in mysterious ways his wonders to the lawn and six weeks after I got there the Cuban Missile Crisis October 28. 28 but on the 25th I have to tell you this on the 25th that afternoon and the Security Council was debating they brought in a brought up pictures of the missiles they weren't bolted in the ground. But our reconnaissance planes had taken those pictures and they put them behind the draperies during the lunch break and about a quarter to 5:00 that afternoon October 25th Adley Stevenson who was our investor to the U.N. said to the president of the Security Council for the month of October it was was his name. And under the crew chef administration and the Soviet Union said to him. They pulled about from behind and he said Are these your missiles and goods not soft or Zoran

one of the other said I'm not in the prisoner's dock you get your answer in due course and Stevenson said those famous words. Answer me now I'm prepared to wait until hell freezes over for your answer and next morning Kennedy called on the hotline and said to him you get those missiles out of there we're going to bomb out the following Tuesday you saw pictures of them on a boat covered with canvas on the way back to to Moscow. But at any rate that Sunday morning I was flying home every weekend because my family hadn't moved to nick at that time and somebody told me not to. Don't go and I did. They were trying to get me that Sunday morning when they called and my wife said I hadn't didn't come home that weekend and I did go to Sunday school. I just got some breakfast and went down on the subway to the U.N. with me and so I went upstairs

to my office and the phone was ringing and I picked it up and who was it but Jim how are you. I said trying to get you since seven o'clock this morning he said what's happening I said another and I just talked to thought he said what he said what he said just like that. I said I said he said he's going to meet with the principals and I named all the principals I said was who we said we have a group we've got a call back they're not TV room since seven o'clock this morning trying to find somebody. I learned later on as Incidentally they did he called a couple of the reporters that they could find it well it would not only couldn't find him they don't want to touch it with a ten foot pole it looked like. And John migraine and I've been following it for the the two or three weeks of debate on this crisis why wasn't John there that John I was on a hunting trip with his son. That's way out there and. Things work out for you sometimes. So I said to her Will you give me a little few minutes so I went way back with about a half a block to the other end of the hall to the TV room and the three

cameramen were there and they were saying you ready my allies are we ready. He said Well Jim said you're going to do a bullet and I said Well give me a couple minutes and I took two or three minutes and I said it's a beautiful Sunday morning in October here in New York but I can't tell you what's going to happen before the sun goes down. But the secretary general is going to meet with the three principals Mr. Yost and Mrs.. Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Good's nice Mr. Zorn of the Soviet Union and we'll keep you posted all day long this is Mal good ABC News United Nations and three phones lit up and I said a press one and it was the fella from radio. He said Now we didn't take that he said. Can you do it over again for us as well I got two other calls were coming back in about three or four minutes. Yeah I one was from my sister in Pittsburgh who was getting ready to go to church she said I'm going to go. But I want to tell my church I said well I'll probably be on a couple more times before that a couple of days days down and the other one was a man who

from California I think it was who called me who called to say he was so proud to see me. But at any rate it got worse as the day went on and debated and haggard he was so proud he said Oh the other one of them had a good back. Peggy said Matt you did a great job he said stay on top of it I said don't worry Jim I will now it's kind of ironic because you were put at the U.N. basically to kind of keep you out of the way. Absolutely absolutely. If they get a jacket told him it might mean trouble in the NEWSROOM. Tension racial tension and whatnot. Of course by the time I had been here about two or three weeks with John McBain they put me on other assignments as well but never dreaming that this issue was going to come up and that John would be there to cover. And on that particular Sunday I think you were on the air about 17 times 17 times nine times in network radio and eight times in network television.

If you know the more you're on a moment and went for that particular week it's a modest maybe to say that I made more money that week than I made the first year I came out of college. Here at the corner of Arkansas and Pacific avenues in Atlantic City. Just two and a half blocks from the site of the 1964 National Democratic Convention is the first hand evidence of what civil rights workers from corps in the end have to face in certain parts of our country. Top U.S. officials made it clear. All right you're now officially network correspondent. How are we how were you received by by blacks and how were you received by the whites. Well there weren't many blacks there. Let's put put it that way but what the black people they were writing you talk about pride there was all kinds of pride and I got some letters like this and it made people I hope that

whoever sees this will understand it but I got one letter that Jim passed had to be passed on to me and said I think that was a colored man. Who who kept me abreast of things all last summer and he did a great job and if he was a colored man this is America and that's the way it ought to be. These are the kinds of letters that I made to convince them that they had made a mistake. That's right and you think they'll be further trouble tonight. No I don't. Now when you started reporting in the 60s they were shooting film then. Now we use videotape. I remember the days the film. In particular incidents happened with you where your story might not get on the air. Well yes yes there were a dummer of stories in. Remember that happened well that I tried not to be bitter because it's gone and I showed you the plaque. I will show you the plaque that

where he raised the money to buy the plaque and to buy me a piece of luggage. When I retired the fellow who had this attitude but he would try to fill your camera camera and go in the next and we missed the show last night in about the third time I said to him you know Tom called Tom but it was his name I said to him you know I know what's happened you didn't know it. Don't do that I'm just trying to make a living just like you can make a living faces as red as could be whatnot. But he was doing it deliberately would take the field it would twist it so that you know he would twist it so that smeared so that it couldn't come out of production after they developed it. It wouldn't be usable. That happened about three times. But we put a stop to that. What did you think of it.

Well I got. The pasty face. And what kind of hate is no different than another. I was up there Saturday and

I would interview him after the meeting in three hours and he would call be callable policed by police and surround the crowd 25 or 30 policeman to maintain order and he called him names and what know what. They wouldn't bother him. But I said that is not the answer and I convinced him that I convinced him that it that his philosophy was not right. But after he went to the Mecca and went to Africa they convinced him for an alternative. And. If the nation didn't respond as we know that three months long it takes to know what we were facing in terms of chaos this is a kind of a desperate demand for the nation to respond and then there was Martin Luther King the nonviolent movement was that effective. Well it was effective. It's just too bad

Martin didn't live to see it. He pricked the conscience of people. Who can do what they want to do. That's that business of all the civil rights leaders for various reasons. Riverview can't take a stand I have to go with the administration. That's Baptists in the US and I am afraid. That I know that justice. Is in the face of injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Was. The body of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has come for the last time here in Atlanta to the church which he coped bastard with his father in the church which he attended as a boy and the church where he preached the doctrine of nonviolence hoping that some day he would obtain full equality for his negro brothers.

One of the 1000 delegates were in attendance for today's closing session of the National Black Power conference. Several resolutions were passed one to establish May 19 the birthdate of Malcolm X as a black national holiday. Another to hold another black power conference in 1968 after candidates have been selected by Democratic and Republican conventions. The resolution calling for a paramilitary training on the theory that a man's home is his castle and must be defended. You know I think back to some of that coverage. There was very little editing. I've been here since 9:00 this morning they started gathering about 9:15 on the clock right. Must've had three hours and I would say it's between three and five thousand. It's difficult to estimate but I suppose most of these people stayed

home and watched it on television but many of them. Cover the news objective ought to be covered. Here at the grave of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. participants in the poor people's Marts

came by going up to pay their respects to this man who originally had the idea of the march hundreds of the poor Mexicans Indians Puerto Ricans negroes and Appalachian whites are on their way to Washington to present their case to the executives of this the richest nation in the world where 20 percent of its population goes to bed hungry every night despite some bus breakdowns some minor illnesses and a measure of disorganization. The People's March reaches the end of its first week with Washington D.C. its goal next week and whether much is expect to occupy Chante time which they will term the City of Hope. This is good. ABC News in Macon. It's apparent that the poor people's march is picking up a considerably larger number of

people. Yesterday about 600 in number the Midwestern group which also had a larger number than anticipated Sixth Avenue Baptist Church to conscript additional private buses in order to take all the people who want to leave the next leg to Washington next weekend. This is the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham. About 80 people are Washington most of them are from Mississippi. They are the rural poor.

I'd like to introduce some of them to. Miss. Sometime. I have 10 children. We try to make it if we don't. I'd rather die going in and a dad in India. So that's but a glimpse of the face of poverty which exists here in rural Mississippi and in urban ghettos. But poverty which so few of us ever see. This is Mel Goode ABC news in Mississippi. When you think in terms of coverage of the new we

need something where they can do two minutes three minutes on a story if you want to get five good stories in it's better than spasmodic of the way they're doing now with 35 seconds. What do you think that the journalists are different today than they were when when you were in the business. I think so I don't I don't think they have the feeling for people that they should have it's do your job and get on to the next assignment. Now none of these cases appear to have been connected. And almost every case that we know of that we suspected they were different. They were not communist sympathizers shooting anti-communist. We had discussed this for a moment and then golly what do you really think there is a climate in the country that has these assassinations or whether we have just run into a series of them we're just not just running a series of hoops.

Anyway we look at it the lives have been taken by this kind of each and every one of them have been interested primarily in two of the basic problems in American life poverty and deprivation and the other bigotry particularly toward black people in America. And each time you get a man with a strong voice and tremendous support for the kind of program he's trying to get across. Someone takes his life here in Mississippi less than 40 miles from the capital of this state. There all the remnants of discrimination and segregation just to my left is a poor color. There are still some places but they're permitted to spend their money in the other business places. This is what this march against here is all about. We have clips of you actually out in the field and you did look weary. You know on television you cannot look tired that's not good.

But you look weary I mean were you tired mentally physically. I mean we started it was grueling. The things that you were happening you knew it was very little you could do about and I wasn't going to be running due to top management. Mr. Golden said please leave me alone when I would not do that. Good assignments we're going to somebody not to be very little I could do about it except to protest when they headed up here. I had an experience with a documentary that something came up involving. A story and all they called me here at the house and told me to go get a cab and come in right away. They were rioting in some city and out of what it was I just said to

Charlie Schumann was the son who is a desk man I said I am not coming and when you see innovates by the news when he comes in in the morning tell him I'm not and tell him don't you take it he was a nervous Nellie don't you take responsibility he said now it could be your job I said that to me. So when I went in I want to see see and see and said to me you know I don't understand you you're supposed to do what you do and I said please don't give me a lecture will you Bill. Fire me do whatever you want I'm not going to do any more riots until I am able to do something like a documentary like the white reporters are doing. He said like what I said I just get a lot of Atlanta covering a story last week and the government the mayor of Atlanta said we're city too busy to hate if you remember that the last white mayor they had in Atlanta. And I said let me go down there and do a story he said Well give me give me a memo. Again two weeks later this to me and they

gave me a producer to go with me we stayed every weekend five weeks till the top of the mountain. Went to the capital club where the well man and I met for lunch every other day or so I went down and interviewed 16 of them and what did you entitle the stock we called it it can be done. Now it's all a grand dragon 300. The one thing that the racial bigots talk about

United resigned a year ago joined the model of the earth the grand dragon of the planet of America. Building in the. Center right out of. The front as well as part of a

referred to mark or as. The white power structure at the right. And if you do. This you will. If you would like the memories of the Confederate. Leaders black and white. Under. General segregation diffract. Through

the philosophy of keeping the place will never work. Be acceptable provided that. You over and over again. Why would the networks do more stories like this. Let's talk about the future of Black Journalists male and female in the 60s when there was. Need was perceived that more black should be on TV that the floodgates opened up and black reporters male and female moved and probably more females but we're looking if we look at the news now. Things seem to have changed again. Our presence isn't what it used to be what's happening now. Well the Brahma picture is not a bright one and if you're not real

careful. Try to get somebody back in 20 years and who's a neighbor of mine when I when you look at it objectively. And if you're fair and honest with yourself you realize that the matter of segregation is moving in and the only thing that I bought a new lady is English you have so much power and maybe knowledge is doing it. National Organization of Women but it ought not be but this is prejudice and discrimination is coming in. But I want those who are in the profession to remember that. You have to set a standard and you have to do as well as the next person and as man or woman and if you don't you. You pay for it and oft times you have to do much better. I think so often when I talk to young people. About the.

Pride of being black I point to a traffic light and say Can you just tell me. I feel that money sometimes it's cool said Come get this $5 going to the traffic light. We talk a lot about a South African doctor who developed an operation on the heart but the first man was way back in 1890. Dr. Daniel Williams a man came in near Providence Hospital in Chicago with a knife and he sighed and he pulled it out and the nurses held and he sewed the heart up. And he lived until 90 that was 1893 to live until 1920. We need our young people and particularly young white people as well need to know that so that they can have a measure of pride. What he does very well they need to build and we can do something besides what I say before stuff a ball in the basket run down into the end zone and dance with a touchdown or hit a ball over the fence to the bottom of the ninth inning like strawberry did the other day with two men on the win it for

the Los Angeles Dodgers. We can do nothing wrong with that I'm glad to see them do well but I want them to be able to do something else and to make some contribution to young people. You retired from ABC in 1973 but you haven't really retired now. No I had a chance to help an organization a national network two fellows got together and decided they would set up a network to stop drop the news of the time being but they I went with them as really and not as a correspondent but as a consultant because I didn't want them doing it. Nigro program a black program necessarily. I want to be like anybody else does news and we tried to keep that going you know I was critical of some of us have a habit maybe I shouldn't say that but they can differentiate between ask Annex and which is not good it's not impossible and it can be corrected.

The other thing is that you know business I talk to young people about the use of you know I don't know I don't know Bernie Shaw who is with CNN now recently said on an Arsenio Hall show that the people who impacted his broadcast career the most were Edward R. Murrow Walter Cronkite. And Mel good and we wanted to be a newsman when you we're little what did you think you'd be doing right. I was I'm doing precisely what I dreamed about. I couldn't see it in obviously. But when I was growing up in Chicago I was 30. I said I want to be like that. That man was Edward R. and I'm one outstanding journalist who broke the color barrier at ABC. Now what say you. That's some kind of company to be put in and I was awful grateful for him saying that. Now you have six children.

During the time that you were. Working for ABC you were on the road you traveled a lot. How did that impact your wife and your six children. Oh go ahead. I could have never made it. I try to make it up. The governor of Florida doing something he says yeah do windows and whatnot but I could never be safe. And yes she held the fabric together and looked after the kids. All I did was. Try to make some money to keep them in school to give them an education. Sure I get emotional when I I think about what they have meant to us as a family. But Mary held them together I did. And I just tried to make some money and give them a good education. As my father tried to do for us

that's the least I could do. One of the things that I've been hearing throughout our conversation. Is your relationship with the Lord. So many things have taken place in my life that would not have happened if it hadn't been for some kind of divine power. And I believe that as true as I'm sitting here talking to you somebody has some power to do for us when we can't do for ourselves. All he asks you to do is to be reasonable to believe when all is said and done. And now good goes home to be with a lawyer. How does he want to be remembered. Well I just I just. I don't want to leave but I'd really like to be remembered as somebody who'd try to do something something to make life better for somebody not better for black people not better for Afro-Americans not not better for white people but better for humanity.

Well now this is it's been great. Western great for me it's an experience that I never expected to have and I hope I've been able to say something about my career not bragging. But that would indicate that I've tried to do my share having done all that I should have done and have done all that I hope to do. But the time may be getting short. But like I say in that theme on my desk. Yesterday's gone or yams that of yesterday is gone. Tomorrow's not here just to make the best you can of today. Mal good set the stage and helped open the door for African-Americans who wanted to be in television based on what he was able to accomplish. He showed us that age race and status in life one permanent barriers only temporary obstacles when people watched and some watched him with

curiosity. Others with pride. But now Goodman used his field to make a difference. And we should follow his example. We leave you now with some memorable moments from a banquet given by the National Black Media Coalition to honor the lifetime achievement of now good. I'm Doris McMillon. Thank you for joining us. When you see how you report when you see what he had to say you will see for yourself if you have forgotten that Mel was not just a first. Mel was someone who had a message. We've been in love for 39 years he was 30 and I was nine. Please welcome Richard good Mal son. And Randall will burn Mao's grandson to the probably. Is probably one of the greatest men walking the face of this earth as far as I'm concerned. I'm dying with that.

I could be as big a man as he taught us how to always think positive about everything and that nothing was impossible if you kept your faith in God and in yourself like to do it for you. But I don't think I could make it through that. It's cold. The man walking across the town gave him the side. I asked him to form one of these men skilled are they they're trying to get our if you want to be oh they gave a laugh and said No indeed just common labor is all you need they can easily erect in a day or two what it takes to do it. So I thought of this my way. Which one of these roles of my trying to play and why building my life on the no well made plan and trying to do the best I can. Or am I a record of time content with less. God bless everyone

from the bottom of my heart. Thank you very. Much. But. Because you have you.