In Black America; Lerone Bennett Jr. and Dennis Schatzman

you waste the pain settlers by just enough in this country is the time of year we reflect on the achievements of black americans i'm jackie hanson join me this week on his black america people everywhere to decide that no matter what actions lead i'm not going back to rodin and june and in a shotgun this week on in black america the pope

this is in black america reflections of the black experience in american society is very different that i like to say i grew up and the salt in mississippi and thirties and forties and i worked on black newspapers in mississippi in jackson mississippi in the forties i worked on black newspapers since that time i advise say they don't like newspapers and honestly can save my life because in the thirties and forties that virtual art materials like people available

anywhere except in the light weekly newspapers its western edge of one mississippi i used weight every week for these papers to come out to find out what was happening and what saddens you know louis like football teams like college was it was just a hole to me that made it possible for me to look beyond the prisons and this time the wrong religion journalist historian and senior editor of everyday matters a february is black history month in this country is the time of year we reflect on the achievements of black americans thanks to currently within the father of black history month who had bought for siding with them in february of nineteen twenty nine to inaugurate negro history week which later developed and black history month and that was it was a specialist in our areas of black history but was

especially interested in the history of black participation in the economic and social development of this country i'm jackie hanson this week dennis schaffner the first executive director of the national association of black journalists enrolled in a junior senior editor ebony magazine in black america the first task the black people everywhere is to decide that no matter what happens yes we i'm not going back we've got to say with john f kennedy the riverbed to pay any tax they bear any burden go anywhere do anything oppose the needful and support an effort to secure the gains of the nineteen sixties who wronged been adjourned as a noted author journalist and senior editor of ebony magazine

he began his journalism career with the atlanta daily world after graduating from morehouse college in nineteen forty nine in nineteen fifty two he was promoted to city editor he held that position until he joined jet magazine as an associate editor in nineteen fifty three nineteen fifty four he transferred to every magazine and in nineteen fifty eight it was a monitor seeing edge of the publication the position he holds today raul been adjourned has written many articles on the black experience for emily is often a number of books including before the mayflower a history of black america what manner of man a biography of martin luther king jr and pioneers of process just to name a few being that this is a black history month there was no better time to speak with the man who has devoted his entire professional career to chronicling the black experience in america i started to become a journalist because i wanted to to know the story

of black people in america and because i wanted to understand what was happening to black people in america and i think it's it's been a great privilege to maine to investigate not as in in america and in black america and to relate what's happening to black people to the earth to the destiny of the united states of america a long time ago when i was a little boy in mississippi my grandmamma used to tell me you're guaranteed a horse with no and by that he meant that you can't be back working overtime by that she meant but you can't beat an institution with no institution by that she meant that you can be to organize now with no organized well i'm glad to see black journalist he organized as black journalists course you can't beat organized hypocrisy was organized

to help i made organize white media were not organized like the rebel and i think all the lights of all americans to understand and support the witness you're making your day in this country we have never been threatened before which right now on the one hand by hemmings character resurgence a plan as m nixon as m and reagan ms redden on the other hand by a great like depression which is already reached levels and some black community is surpassing the level of the white depression of the barriers on screen in the newspaper the other day that of economic indicators continue that we were sown been another major the recession i got news for the rest of america a recession would be a major employment in black america we're in

the midst of a major black oppression we have been in the middle of a major black depression for the last seven eight and it what gives me the brothers and sisters and friends and replays today with the prices the monumental an unparalleled proportions rather crossroads of college and being in this country the next twenty years they're going to be the most crucial in the history of this country the next twenty years ago and to determine whether the slave died in vain and whether the descendants trouble and dreamed i'm assuming here that that that you bring a young journalist now the reaction of our rights laws a hundred years ago that was thrown up and the civil rights laws i'm assuming that that you know that a hundred years ago black legislators when the majority in the south carolina legislature and above the black governor and the state of louisiana

you intellectuals assume that you all know there's a saying that you know we've been through this before and eighteen other than eighty one as the nineteen hundred and they won with a neoconservative throat of last year's revolt against taxes in this country and you know what there was animating other than eighty one there was an innately automate it won the same thing this land in nineteen eighty one they were standard that taxes were being used to support black schoolchildren and lazy black well melissa it was a difficult environment you're you need to write about black history books and articles that you've written seventy it's not difficult there's a great deal of material out there for more than a hundred years black historians carter woodson to bp to pull an engine called john hope franklin from one hundred years black historians have been investigating this material please deal of jazz tap the surface

of the vast amount of historical data our own black people in this country in olympia no library is a known newspaper clips and old boxes in all letters in all kinds of stuff and you know it all matt is a materials are available and i don't find that difficult because the problem is that at the time to develop the material and to write it but the material is out their hand we need many more young journalist a young historians a young social hours to develop this material and to make it available to the black people and to all the people of america was allied bit of black journalists in the fifties and sixties to recover in the civil rights movement from a broad perspective it was very different that i like to say i grew up in the south in mississippi

thirties and forties and i worked on black newspapers in mississippi in jackson mississippi in the forties i worked on black newspapers since that time ah i say they don't like newspapers in mama speaking saying my life because in the thirties and forties devon for a little pop material on black people available anywhere except in the big black weekly newspapers to pittsburgh courier discovered a friend and as a little boy in mississippi i used to wait every week for these papers to come out to find out what was happening in our what's happening joe lewis fight would like their football teams and twenty black colleges is just the whole world and to me and that made it possible for me to look beyond the prisons of

the mississippi at that time it's always been difficult and exhilarating to be a blood german cinema many decades of course no blood journalist could not work on white newspapers why these pictures used to do to imply pajamas for many decades in this country white newspapers white media did not print anything on black people except crimes for many decades in this country like if you could not find a picture look like me in a white newspaper that shane chateau to some extent today but has not changed enough since the kerner commission report number of black germans like a white newspapers but not enough and with the exception of course of bob maynard out in the open like jerome as

night and the management and production hands above white newspaper white media we've got to change that more and more than that we got to make it possible faraz white media to reflect all the experiences of all the people within their geographical area this is not a white country has never been a white characters are black brown red yellow white country and the media in this country don't reflect that whole spectrum particularly gratifying to work for black ocean i am a not a black the bishop was i've been fortunate in my life and worked all of my life bob like newspapers and magazines and now the staff at the knee and it's very exciting to me or to work far black publication and churches many young black genesis as possible to the key firms

are working for the black press were a black radio are violent or people like newspapers in black magazines because despite the five that more germans have been hired by white newspapers the black presses deal a permanent and critical foundation black market and we need young black gymnast it's exciting to work the black press that's all the black jurors change in the eighties new perspective than foresight i frankly don't think the role of the chain suit on the freedom journal it's our task to tell america what's happening to black people a job like people what's happening to them to provide models and like you hear july people to mobilize and organize and to struggle following for freedom in this country

that was the mission of the blood pressure like journalists one hundred years ago it still on missions give me two three minutes to say justin conclusion some things about what we gotta do on sale by houses the first draft of his living as the task of integration in the black of your first acts would not integrate a black so coal class and a black middle class without integrate like journalism black to integrate the blackhawks and the black masons and black bankers and like accountants the first task we face today it's integration in the black community you know if we leave we get help with that the black journalists but lawyers in a black doctors and black engineers in black veils and black

baptists in the black movement and the black catholics if we could ever get all black people together we get here and just being in a week or two a second test flown out of that in house tax the task of dealing with our cells are redefining our roles within the context of the liberation of black people and essential insights of the black press tradition are your brothers and sisters i'm a black journalist ronald white means that they're brothers or sisters mr om oblige amazon on a black newspaper i have brother center that i work downtown and i were getting to where you were you are responsible where you work for black people a maze that that i'm nothing special and that you are nothing special that are degrees in fact haitians and plaques in boats don't antagonize to special

treatment on special manner wise but certainly the national socialism why joe's important very important like people to maintain contact with one another as they move all it into these different structures in america off we need to talk to one another we need to communicate with one another we need to support one another ah we need to make information available to one another seminar to protect ourselves and to to do what's necessary to advance to calls like people are people of this country that is the moment that the germans would supply management people of black comedies of black engineers professionals as they move into white structures they move

into very dangerous situations personally and collectively they can lose themselves first of all as individuals yeah and they can blow the whole blood stain if they're not very careful so they need to come together at least once a year to remind themselves of what their part to get this what they need to get the stress they need to go back to struggle for another year and structures which is sometimes hostile to them personally nostalgia black people generally so we need to make to every different points at one black people have responsibility and duty to work anywhere in america oakland's available we need to involve ourselves in every level and the work of this society but we must demand i think the same right that jews of the man that the irish people are demanding we must demand

the right to maintain our identity as people who come from a different from from the peculiar and very important cultural part of this country so we need to work as blacks and as americans and we need support structures didn't make it possible for us to get the energy and the wisdom we need to continue to work in environments under those conditions no that offer and joe's rome been a junior senior editor of ebony magazine it is on september fifteenth of last year the national association of like throws open

their national office in the newspapers center in reston virginia on august twelfth of last year they may be capable of directors voted unanimously to selected as shasta a former pittsburgh public school administrator and judge as its first executive director i spoke with mr shachtman after receiving news of his selection i'm a native pittsburgh pennsylvania to the pittsburgh public school system that says debris from the recipient's burt i attended the un athletic scholarship and if there's an advanced training it johns hopkins and plus i have a various of the cases along a former church a former newspaper in pittsburgh coroner and deputy comptroller for the school district of pittsburgh first time and has basically my life story hi to happen to consider

applying for the position i was on a panel on investigative reporting in the region to be meeting at penn state back in march and then of the opening and having been a journalist most of my adult life never gets out of your blood and how would desperately get back into it in an area where you live some newly acquired skills management legal so forth saw this is an excellent opportunity to get involved in journalism from a national scale being involve people who have a light sort of mine says that coming up with programs were by a young musician can raise money and also allow journalists to be able to make some consultant and at the same time for example being in west virginia their close proximity how diverse providing conferences such

as the ones in the congressional black caucus organizations have or buy you bring in people who pay fees to you listen for many jobless jonas bastions of pearls of wisdom and that they can make some money and the organization to maximize their number of different ways which child needs more with the year the advice in authority or yellow black media organizations do you foresee a better working relationship being the executive director of the major yes in fact i think that would be you have a strong system a lot less have been active with an mp a affected and a beach is reaching out to a child's become more amenable more hostile to ending an mp a liberal image

our sense that muscle loss he pretty much runs an mp and when he's posing or not and i think that's a good step and chives and what doesn't sell sees that exist between seasons and many of the reasons these pan am someone of ai inferiority complex and they exist in between people of the black person to those people of more human and joining us and i think those kinds of things were there people have to realize that we're all black will have the same types of these interests and tastes that we can work together the better off we could be able to take your time fans need to get the organization to someone very the story and do you foresee up to us as far as trying to bring more minority journalists into the fall lessons and yet i think there's

nothing to take care of themselves as you mentioned patients and the new zones are starting these mostly major cities are in the east most major unions sony's more moral allies in west texas texas or florida state that's becoming involved a slight laugh a time what was found in the midwest but now most of its members in the southwest now at seventy five years of his seventy five years old as time goes on these things will take your themselves to expand solvent that's a major problem all long as asia's also have a minority groups in nature that most of the founders of organizations a print journalist do you foresee re more electronic or you throw as raucous turns into the fall and i think we're there's nothing that keeps them out other than the tapestries of that picture and vaulted broadcast

doing in seconds and minutes as opposed to doing and hours and days so they have a little more time to get involved it's a broadcast people they have to be able to find ways to get involved as if it isn't the end of it is they're much more hectic but people suffered that's one of the reasons that as they can find more time it involves a post assad besides getting a first job would you foresee the biggest obstacle for white journalist living in august first after getting a first job i wrote everything's been virtually untouched and sixteen fifteen years ago and i did not get a job until i was able to meet someone who had a connection with her parents owned paper in baltimore somebody's whipped out of my work and that's another story finals week you want to get in here and do good job in advance i think that

if people are willing to go to far removed sort of butte montana to get that first job do a good job in that state of the people who are going to be you know one of those flat there were going to reno nevada that's we have to go fifty five percent of all world leaders have no blacks on his desk and they were a s and the apa has about all kinds of things that they've talked about trying to get people to get involved in the media people are starting new transit will start at the ballot in the us that will start in the big markets start to start we can get into the trade and then you move on people coming to watch it and is having done so many various different

types of occupations what you believe is your strongest point coming in has to first submit research hard work on the taipei and worked very hard to work sometimes to our commitment to honesty i think there's a very important audience and that haven't voted to go along with everyone else that i'm very very liberal politician various factions and i think that will be most important next year's convention is being held in miami will you start preparing for an ad which is mid september maybe the first week was i begin to begin september fourteenth i'm going to be bored of miami's problem so far your particular opinions of the convention wyoming joint so far been here since tuesday i've had no we have not had a chance and

just everything i'm still so excited about it in the position of those selected of a stiff competition all of the people is that we have no evidence of pittsburgh two of them were people who trained me so i know this is an example of the student testing out the teachers as this beautiful to see so many black journalists as most intimate before my life any consideration about maybe someone with iraqis elements in reston virginia have to assess needs and see whether or not the us will come from from i don't want to pay did jasmine the new executive director of the national association of black journalists if you have a chemical like approaches a cassette copies program write us the address this in black america longhorn radio network

ut austin austin texas seventy seven twelve or in black america's technical producer clove hargrove i'm john hanson join us next week you've been listening to in black america reflections of the black experience in american society in black america is produced and distributed by the center for telecommunication services at ut austin and does not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin where this station is this is the longhorn radio network