In Black America; W.E.B. Dubois Banquet with Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr.

Thank you for watching! From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. I insist that many of you leave here tonight and don't enter your TV stations, your newspaper jobs, your radio stations without knowing what W.E.B. Du Bois stood for.

And I might correct some of the people here who, one who thought he was a senator doing the reconstruction period and another who thought that the Niagara Movement was some kind of party at a waterfall. So why are we here? We are here to give validity to the achievements of John H. Johnson, the developers of Essence. B-E-T, in particular, a magazine, Black Enterprise, dealing with economics, because there are people who would love to see you leave and not do anything but say we were at Du Bois banquet, but not recall anything he stood for.

Vernon Jarrett, P.S. President, National Association of Black Journalists, and Calamans Chicago Tribune. This past summer, the National Association of Black Journalists held his 20th Annual Convention in Philadelphia. NABJ was founded on December 12, 1975 in Washington, D.C. It was created to unify African American journalists, bring recognition to their achievement in the newsrooms of America, and to bring about a better understanding between Black and white media. 41 members helped form this organization, there was no staff, no national office, and very little capital. In the late 1980s, membership increased to 3,000. NABJ continues to be the largest minority journalists organization in the world, and the role of the organization is expanding, accommodating the needs of African Americans in all areas of communications. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, the W.E.B. Du Bois banquet with Johnny L. Cocker and Jr. in Black America.

Because there are folks out there who want you to go to sleep because they plan to eliminate some of your jobs, and they want you to lose the capacity to fight back. Now I know why in 1948, as a kid sitting at the feet of Du Bois in the home of Dr. Mets T. B. Lachard, my editor at the Chicago Defender, which I wish we had remembered, May 5th was the 90th anniversary of the Chicago Defender, which caused a great migration which encouraged John Johnson to come from Chicago from Arkansas. He told me I should read Frederick Douglass, and I want you to read at least one or two of the 21 books with seminal ideas that he wrote. Now I know why he said read Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, spoke of the contented slave that he observed

in slavery, and he said this, I have found that to make our contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. The National Association of Black Journalists is a relatively young organization at 20 years with a fascinating past, a dynamic present, and a promising future. As the organization enters its third decade, young members might assume the organization has always been a vital and influential force in the profession of journalism. Think again, NABJ was born out of the struggle of African American journalists to achieve excellence and acknowledgement in the journalism profession. At this year's annual convention held in Philadelphia, NABJ celebrated the momentum of 20 years of struggle. It also earned members of the black press for its continual support of the organization and its commitment to tell our story.

At the W.E.B.D. Boyce Bandquit, attorney Johnny L. Cochran was the keynote speaker. Mr. Cochran can be considered one of the world's best known trial attorneys. Cochran's role in winning an acquittal for former football star and actor O.J. Simpson made him a key player in what has been called the trial of the century. A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Loyola University School of Law, he became a member of the California Bar in 1963 and was admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968. As African Americans in the media, the positions that you occupy are so very important, perhaps it's important as ever before in our history in this nation. So thank you in advance for the jobs that you've done to this point and thank you for the jobs that you will do in the future. Now it's often been said that the work of journalists is the first rough draft of history.

This is because the newspaper and magazine articles that you write and the television and radio reports that you broadcast constitute some of the most important research material that historians will turn to when they write the record of these times. And as black journalists, the roles that you face every other daily basis are particularly critical to the resolution of a tumultuous era in which this country currently finds itself. And these are tumultuous times indeed. Consider, as Ralph Ellison writes, in his work what America would be like without blacks also quoted by the great Cornell West in his book Race Matters. Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as the who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the outsider.

Many whites could look at the social positions of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not an American. But this is tricky magic. Despite his racial difference and social status, something indisputably American about Negroes not only raised doubts about the white man's value system, but aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow black. There have been few errors in the short history of this nation that can compare with the present times. In an era of what I will call the polarization of America, this phenomenon is not complicated. It doesn't require a Ph.D. in sociology to comprehend. In fact, you can detect it simply by walking down the street of any major city, or simply

by turning on the evening news, Americans have entrenched themselves in camps that divide sharply along racial lines, camps which manifest themselves through fearful and territorial mindsets that fiercely defend the perceived interests of the clan, at the expense of reason, at the expense of fairness, and at the expense of the constitutional framework upon which our great system is built. We all know what has happened to the presumption of innocence, which is the constitutional right of every defendant and one of the bullworks of our criminal justice system. A recent CNN USA and Gallup poll shows that 75 percent of the white population feels that Mr. O.J. Simpson is guilty of the charges, while 87 percent of the black population believes that Mr. Simpson is the victim of a racist criminal justice system.

There is indeed a great disparity in our thinking in this matter. And Mr. Vernon Jarrett, I want you to know that you've taken part of my speech, but I want to tell you that I know about Du Bois also. Let me share with you that in thinking about tonight's dinner, and the man for whom this great dinner is named, W.E.B. Du Bois, co-founder of the Niagara Movement, the predecessor of the NAACP, the first black Ph.D. in this country. And one of the most brilliant minds of our culture has produced the events of the present day will not come as a surprise in the introduction of his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois flatly recognize that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. In other works, Du Bois prophesied that the war of the color line will outdo in savage inhumanity any war this world has yet seen.

Speaking from a global perspective, Du Bois further predicted that the equivalent of racial Armageddon could only be avoided if European civilization extended the democratic ideals to the yellow, brown, and black peoples. In The Souls of Black folks, Du Bois nakedly exposed for the first time the personal dilemma of the African-American stating that the African-American ever feels his tunas and American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in a dark body whose dog at strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. Du Bois further elucidates that the history of the American Negro is the history of this drive.

And I've always felt that in any time you find yourself faced with an inescapable reality, the most intelligent way to deal with it is to embrace it. And so tonight, the lives of these great media giants, John Johnson, Earl Graves, Ed Lewis Clarence Smith, Robert Johnson, and Robert Bolton, all demonstrate a unique and good thing that occurs when an African-American businessman, business person, journalist embraces our cultural identity. He or she becomes magically transformed from a journalist into an advocate. Let me then spend a few moments with you and talk about this concept of black journalists as advocates. You as black journalists stand in a very pivotal position in our society. In effect, you are the liaison between the African-American society and the world around it.

As members of our culture, you speak to our nation and our world through this culture. You are our medium of communication. You are our storytellers. And most significantly, you are our advocates. Yes, I'm not afraid to use that word, and no, don't think I'm unfamiliar with the many guises of the media's frequently used party line, that media is supposed to be unbiased. The media is supposed to report the news objectively. I'm also not unfamiliar with the reality of how the media's self-proclaimed objectivity plays out in the real world. Indeed, I've become quite familiar with the white-dominated media's brand of so-called unbiased journalism. I believe that it is possible for you to be advocates and yet be fair, be honest, and be truthful in supporting the causes which you espouse. I have been familiar with the slanted coverage of the evening news over the last 12 months

and the kind of courtroom events which make for good copy, which is synonymous with anything which exists the guilt of O.J. Simpson. Why, if you only access to the trial as through the evening news, you would likely be inclined to believe that there is no presumption of innocence whatsoever in this country. However, if you're in Department 103 of the Los Angeles Superior Court from 9 to 6 o'clock every day, as I am, you would see all aspects of this trial, both the prosecution's case as well as the defense, but you won't see that on the news. The sound bites and the Earth's excerpts from the trial's coverage, which compromise the top stories across our nation, are calculated to sell the guilt of Mr. Simpson and the corollary insincereity of the defense team and our tactics. Some days when I leave court and I watch the news, I wonder what trial they're watching,

because it certainly isn't the trial that we're trying and our jury is listening to. I am familiar with the media's characterization of who the victims are in this case. Any person subject to the predominant characterizations of this trial would be led to believe that the only victims in this case are the families of Nicole Brown, Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. How often is it that Mr. Simpson's family is placed in a sympathetic light, even his minor children, despite all of the hardships that they have suffered and are continuing to suffer? And yes, even Mr. Simpson himself was a victim, but we believe that he is cloaked in a presumption of innocence, that he's been wrongfully charged, and he too then becomes a victim. But no one would talk about that. And so it seems to me as we consider the events that the challenge facing black journalists is no different from the challenge facing black lawyers being an advocate for justice.

And justice can only be the product of an egalitarian American consciousness that gives credence to all of America's voices. Not only those that America wants to hear, or is used to hearing, no American journalist has adhered to this ideal, more steadfastly than Ida B. Wells. As a committed journalist, her life extolls justice as accurately and as deeply as the life of any great American in any profession. Think about her life. This was a woman who was born the daughter of slaves who at a young age saw her newspaper office burned and destroyed because she denounced the lynching of three of her friends in her editorials. The problem was, she was speaking with a voice that America was not used to hearing. The voices were always there and the concerns were always there.

She says that America was not used to hearing them and didn't want to hear them. Undaunted, this great woman began a crusade to investigate the lynching of blacks in the American South. She argued that lynching stemmed not from the defense of white womanhood, but from the white sphere of economic competition from blacks. She subsequently traveled throughout the United States and England, lecturing and founding anti lynching societies and black women's groups. This woman was an advocate. Yes, she was a journalist as well, but she used her career and her soul to advocate for her people and to make a difference in this society. In observing the life and work of our ancestor Ida B. Wells, I'm reminded of an excerpt from Richard Wright's 12 million black voices, also quoted in Cornell's West Race Matters. We black folk are history and our present being are a mirror of all the manifold experiences

of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endured is what America is. If we black folk perish, America will perish. If America has forgotten her past, the letter looked into the mirror of our consciousness and she will see the living past, living in the present. For our memories go back through our black folk of today, through the recollections of our black parents and through the tales of slavery, towed by our black grandparents, to the time when none of us, black or white, lived in this fertile land. The differences between black folk and white folk are not blood or color, and the ties that bind us are deeper than those that separate us. The common road of hope, which we all traveled, has brought us into a stronger kinship than any words, laws or legal claims.

So as the life and work of Ida B. Wells demonstrates, when black consciousness manifests itself through the media, the result opens the hearts and minds of all Americans to the voices of our people. This which to confute the title of Derrick Bell's book will remain, quote, at the bottom of the well, if we leave the responsibility for telling our story exclusively to an institutional media that has exclusively centered its influence around the interests of white men, which are right again eloquently states that the issues affecting blacks affect all of America. And so it seems that once again, as black people, we are cast in a familiar role as America's conscience, whether it be holding fast to the constitutional presumption of innocence, or staunchly affirming our humanity through the civil rights laws. This is a place where we've been before, and a place where we will be again.

This then is not a fight for the faint of heart. The stakes are high, and so too is the price of failure. What we should all fear is that our opponents may succeed in turning back the clock. For affirmative action laws are wiped out, if black politicians are chased from office, if legal truisms are overturned by public opinion polls, then the end of the second reconstruction is upon us. Let me make it clear. I'm not asking you to take to your computers your microphones or your video cameras in Defense of O.J. Simpson. I'm not asking you to help save just one man. What I'm asking you is to weigh in in the defense of a people by challenging the indifference of your bosses and challenging your own fears. What I want, what I want you to do is to take on the forces in this country that are hell-bent on undoing the gains that African-Americans have made.

If you will do that, if you will fight this fight with the tools of your craft and with the talent that God has given you, if we'll use your journalism as I to be wells-dead or W. Monroe Trotter once did to inspire a race and confront our enemies, then you will have done the job that the Colonel Commissioner's report had in mind for you. But if you avoid this fight, if you duck this fight, you will leave a gaping hole in Black America's defensive wall, and the battle for our civil rights and racial justice will be almost certainly lost. Together we can help save this country, and together we can help this country live out the true meaning of its creed, of life, liberty, and pursuit of justice for all, regardless of race, age, or gender.

And so that's the challenge that I would like to put before you this evening at this banquet, so aptly named in the honor of W.E.B. Du Bois, and I pray that each of you here tonight will accept this challenge. As the great Frederick Douglass said, a century ago, we must be about agitating, agitating, agitating. And finally, because I want to get you out of here on time, I close with a story that's one of my favorite stories, and I think about this story very, very often. It's a story of sojourner truth, an indignant slave woman who could neither read or write. She, however, understood about injustice, the injustice of slavery, the injustice of sexism, the injustice of what she was going through, and she went around the country in her day giving speeches, anti-slavery speeches, because she knew it was wrong. And although it seemed hopeless to overcome, she would give these speeches day after day.

And one day she was giving a speech in an elder white man in the back of the room, looked at her and said, oh, lady, I don't care as much as a bite of a flee for you're talking about slavery. She paused as she spoke about the evils of slavery and looked at him and said, that may be true. But I'm going to keep talking, and hopefully I'll keep you scratchy. And I think that that says it perhaps best of all, that all of you, all of us in this room, working together, pricking, prodding, scratching, biting, if we will, the conscience of this nation can transform even the largest nation in the world into a better place for all of our citizens. And that's what I encourage you to do today and tonight. And every day when I'm in that courtroom, I think about this story of Sajrana True.

When the odds seem the most hopeless, there's something within us that will not allow us to be torn asunder. We know that our cause is right and our cause is just. Prepared for the fight in our whole life has been about fighting for justice. And in the course of the last year in this trial, I've always looked and looked for a meaning of this case beyond just O.J. Simpson. And I think we finally found it. For when we were involved in this trial, we always believed in our client. We always believed there was something wrong about this particular detective. There was something wrong about this evidence. But I never knew until about four or five weeks ago that these tapes existed. And these tapes that you will hear this week are very, very important to this trial and beyond this trial because they bespeak a culture, a police culture that's not only in Los

Angeles, it's in your city, and it's all across this country and it. If we have an opportunity, you will understand that. You will understand why the other side fights so vigorously to say, well, this is totally irrelevant. These are the same people who talk all every day about credibility, about telling the truth, about raising your hand and swearing to tell the truth. And so if their critical and chief prosecution witness takes the stand and lies, who among you could quarrel with the fact that that's relevant and germane. And when that person is lied about their feelings about African Americans, and we have his own voice, evidences that over a 10-year period, what could be more relevant? That's not anything about a race card, that's a perjury card, that's a credibility card.

And in addition to that, where you have a propensity to implicate innocent people, and you've shown that throughout, and you talk about that 18 times on these tapes over the course of 10 years, that becomes very, very relevant. And so we will not be undaunted, and I think I've found the reason for this case, that perhaps all of America should understand that the game isn't over until it's over. We don't call the game at halftime, that's an American, that really there is a presumption of innocence, that the Constitution says there's a presumption of innocence, it means it for all Americans, black and white, and it lasts, and it still works, and it's what makes our system great, and you don't make up your mind after you've heard only part of the evidence. And that's all I really ask, wait until you've heard all the evidence, and you watch us, and then you make your decision.

But through it all, I hope we'll be judged, not on whether we win or lose, but how we conducted ourselves in an ethical and a moral manner in this fight, because believe you me this fight is beyond just that courtroom. We're fighting for dignity, we're fighting for integrity, we're hopefully saying that competence comes in all colors, is no respecter of age, race, or gender. And I thank you for your warm welcome since I've been here, and for your support. It's good to come out and find out what the brothers and sisters are thinking. And so I go back home tomorrow with renewed strength, and I will communicate this strength to the members of the team. We will go forward, we will not let you down, we will do our absolute best when lose a draw, and we do expect to win. God bless you and thank you. Johnny Cochran Jr., speaking at the W.E.B.D. boys banquet at NABJ's 20th Annual Convention held in Philadelphia.

If you have a question or comment or suggestions as to future in Black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for a production assistant Chris Halson and IBA technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson Jr., thank you for joining us today, and please join us again next time. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm Johnny O. Hanson Jr., join me this week on in Black America.

And I've always felt that in any time you find yourself faced with an inescapable reality. The most intelligent way to deal with it is to embrace it. The W.E.V. Du Bois vanquit with speaker Johnny L. Cochran Jr. this week on in Black America.