In Black America; National Association Of Black Journalists Dallas Fort-Worth/ABC with George E. Curry ; Part 1

Thank you. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. Twenty seven years, a long time, and there was a time you knew almost everybody. Now half of these kids are here, my former students. It's hard to get in the merge because it was very competitive and right more than one syllable.

And I demand a certain quality of writing. And there are some friends of mine who tried to work for the merge and have been making. I've had reports from New York Times turning a story and get it thrown back because they didn't give me that best work. And I say, if you wouldn't turn this into New York Times, why would you give it to us? And so we just demand those kinds of standards. And that's what I'm always doing. That's why we can't be consistent. George E. Curry, Editor-in-Chief, Emerge Magazine. Last March, the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators hosted the National Association of Black Journalists Region 7 annual conference. More than 300 media professionals, journalists, and educators, communicators, and students from Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. They gathered for four days to re-dedicate themselves to NABJ and the fourth and fifth estates. The conference thing was entitled Committed to the Cause. Those who attended had an opportunity to participate in a town hall meeting, professional development workshops, and seminars. I'm John E. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America.

On this week's program, NABJ's Region 7 conference with George E. Curry, Editor-in-Chief, Emerge Magazine, in Black America. It is frustrating, and it's not unique to Washington. You know, a lot of times when these Black mayors become tick-over cities, it's after all is white to move out. After all, the money is going out to the city pot. And then they expected to perform miracles. You find a lot of major cities where the poverty rate hasn't gone down because of the African-American mayors there. And so that's disturbing. But I think what's important is I think we put it over emphasis on politics. And we use it understandably because it was an outlet that we could use at the time, but we have spent enough on the economic part. And I really think that two things. One, in terms of politically, the action is being shifted to the state and local level, because that's the new federalism. And that's where we should have put our emphasis. And I spend so much time out of Washington and really increase our vigilance at the state and local level. The other thing is we have to really look at economic development as a primary mission right now, because it's very clear to me that we're going to have to clean this mess. And if we, as a group, have 400 billion of a year, we can make better use of it.

The National Association of Black Journalists is the largest media organization for people of color in the world. It has over 5,000 media professionals throughout this country and abroad. There are 69 affiliated professional chapters and 41 student chapters. Lance March in Dallas, Texas, the Dallas Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators holds at the annual Region 7 conference. The conference brought together students working journalists from radio, television, and print, journalism, educators, and media executives to discuss issues of concern that influence the dissemination of news and public affairs programming. One of this year's conference highlights was a presentation by George E. Curry, editor of Emerge Magazine. In Black America, spoke with him following his presentation. Yeah, I grew up in the housing project in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Neither my parents finished high school. I have three sisters, and we all want to call it. Thank God. My first job out of Knoxville College, Tennessee, was at Sports Illustrated as a reporter in New York. Then the St. Louis spokesman's badge for 11 years.

Chicago Tribune for 10, mostly working out with Washington Bureau. And that was a New York Bureau Chief until I took over as editor of Emerge four years ago. What sparked that interest, that initial interest, in becoming a jobless? It was seeing how African-Americans are portrayed in the media. When I was going up in Alabama, there were no African-Americans working on a newspaper, and all the time we saw African-Americans in the newspaper when they were accused of committing a crime or they were playing sports. And I knew there was a lot more to our community than that, and that sort of inspired me to go into journalism. And our kind of way, the classified ads were segregated by race. You know, we have colored bus bar and Christian woman in this room made kind of ads in them. And it just inspired me. Some people, you know, racism discouraged me because I was determined that they weren't going to put me down. Give us an example of the experiences at Sports Illustrated, being an African-American. I was the only one there, so I was a Black Caucus. Whenever I met, that was a Black Caucus. And I enjoyed it. You know, you go to all-star games and the big football games, and you are a kid out of an out of college.

It's really, really exciting. And so I really enjoyed that a whole lot, and I wouldn't trade anything for the experience. I got to meet a lot of first-class writers, like Frank DeFour, and Tex Mall, and these people who are... It's a lot of people I even know to this day, still. What are some of the standing sections of the magazine, Muffin, and Muffin? We have a technology section. We have race matters, which is around a ball of incidents across the country. We have a health column. We have a business column. We have a sports column. We have a last-worry, where the readers can talk, and we have a jazz column. Is it difficult to find advertisers in the magazine, or we get the synapse as we call them? Of course, everybody won't. But we're doing quite well. We need your product. We have a lot of major accounts. Our largest category is automobiles. We're growing, not as fast as I like, but then we'll be there.

Circulation is growing at the same time. And so we have that. The interesting thing about the Black Press is that some of them have gone to advertise a kind of head-and-hand, and said, Master, please, we want to do anything new. Please give us an ad. Emeritus has taken the opposite approach, because we deal with a lot of controversy. But what we say is, when we deal with controversy, more people pick up the magazine. That means more people see your ad. So in terms of a business, that's why you may not like it. Philosophically, it serves your interest better, and people have been able to respond to that. What has been the response from the readers since you all are the Black magazine for Black America? And you all don't pull any punches. Some people have been shocked. I think many of them have been really gratified. And a lot of people have comments. We've got a lot of time. Finally, somebody's finally doing this. Kind of like, African Americans were about books. They were saying, oh, Black people don't read books. And that's simply not true. So the risk for me was giving up New York Bureau Chief of the Chicago Tribune. And I probably would have gone overseas as a transferring correspondent.

And say, do I want to take the risk out here? And it was a risk to me. What really a risk? Because I felt that once we did this, that people would like it. And my whole staff is all professionals. From the USA to the day, I watched them post, I used to lose the world for a time magazine. And none of us had ever worked for the Black Presby force. So what we had done was learn all our skills in the so-called larger world. And then bring them back to really have a first-class magazine. When we talk about committed to the cause, I think one difficulty is that the words come easily, but the actions don't. And when we talk about being committed to the cause, we don't mean your personal cause. We don't mean how you can best look out for number one. We mean looking out for the people of our community. Usually, we have no voice, and usually, who are my line by the media media outlets in this country.

I covered Jesse Jackson campaign 84. And Jesse would always say, text without context is pretext. And I never didn't know what that meant. I'm not sure Jesse knows what that meant, but it sounded good. So to talk about any kind of commitment and to put any kind of context, we have to go back to the beginning of this country. You cannot isolate what we are today without having that historical context. And the historical context is that this country was founded on a lot, that we've been educated all our lives and our textbooks based on lies, and some of you have had the guts enough to say it. Let's start with the hypocrites who founded this country. I've gone to Monticello.

I've seen the great inventions of Thomas Jefferson, but also noted he owned 200 slaves and was a second largest slave master in that county. And I also know that even when he died, he only freed five of his slaves. So they don't talk to me about the founding fathers. They call them founding fathers for more reason than one. It's kind of hard to stand before you and talk about Christopher Columbus and we have a great holiday for somebody who got lost. I mean, he was going in one direction and thought he was going in another and said, hey, we'll give you a holiday. Yet we have to fight together a holiday for Dr. King. It's kind of hard to tell me, hear me, hear me, hear me, hear me, listen to you say, give me liberty or give me death when you enslaved a whole bunch of people from Africa.

Had them do your work and then you called them lazy. So I think we have to go back to the beginning. It's kind of hard for me to hear the founding fathers say they want to independence from Britain yet while enjoying that we should enslave people of color. So what I'm saying is that we have to acknowledge that this concept of white superiority, particularly white male superior to already because they treated white women the way they treated us. They couldn't vote, couldn't have legal custody of their children, couldn't own property, even white women couldn't vote to 1920. That is the history of this country. And that's why you read the Dread Scott decision that the judge can say at the time of a declaration of independence and when the Constitution of the United States was formed and adopted, blacks had no rights, which the white man was bound to respect.

Replete throughout all of our laws and our custom. And Karen, I know you read Hooker Bear Finn and that's a passage from Mark Twain there to show you how to permeate every fiber in America society. There was a following exchange. Good gracious. Anybody hurt? No man, kill a nigger. Well that's lucky because sometimes people do get hurt. Go back and read Mark Twain. This is what we grew up with. While I was going up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where those Dick and Jane book, Dick was white, Jane was white, even a dog spot was white. So this is a contact that in South Carolina, it was illegal, first of all, throughout the columnist to teach African Americans to read.

That's why I have no patient with kids who don't read today. In fact, in South Carolina, the fine for violating the law was 100 pounds, which was higher than the penalty for killing the runaway slave. I think about that. Teaching a slave to read or write was more threatening than slaves fleeing their master. Now this is not ancient history. I think back to my own life. I just turned 50. I used to tell people I'm approaching 40, but I wouldn't tell them in which direction. But in my lifetime, when I was a senior in high school, we had separate water fountains. Mark, white, and color. This is not something I saw on eyes, and prior to you had it right here in Texas as well. And Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and throughout the South.

In the go downtown, when you can't try and close in all the mannequins, the mannequin was white. It could even help black mannequin. And I think the thing inspired me to go in journalism where I would read my newspaper, a little sorry, Tuscaloosa news. Couldn't get a job there, but could get a job at Sports Illustrated. A lot of sports magazines in the country, but couldn't get a job in my hometown newspaper. And I would look at the ads, and they would say, color bus boy wanted. White Christian lady wants roommate. And they had to segregate it wide, and white MCAs, and schools, and churches. But let's move forward. We don't have to talk about my life path. We don't have to talk about the founding fathers. I'm going to give you a little quiz here. I'm going to throw out some names and give no explanation. And when I finish this, you think there's no such thing as racism,

then you can just leave right now. Bensonhurst. Forsyth County, Georgia. Randolph County, Alabama. Willie Hardin, right in the king. Charles Stewart, Susan Smith. Dennis. The Bureau of Alcohol is back on fire on. Texaco, Avis. All state. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, St. Petersburg, Florida. You think race is not a problem? Bill Bradley said race is America's original sin, and race remains its unresolved dilemma. Even when we look at this St. Petersburg in the excessive use of police force,

even we know that more than anything else, we learn nothing from the 60s. We know that that's the, which was start a racial outburst quicker than anything else. Yet several years ago, the Gnett News Service did a study of 100 cases in which the victim of police brutality were awarded at least $100,000. In fact, the total figure was $92 million in civil judgments between 1986 and 1991. So even in this case, where they had these huge payoffs, Gnett found that cops or cues of police brutality were more likely to be promoted than to be punished. In those cases, 185 police officers only five lost their jobs, and 19 were either promoted or got a better law enforcement job.

In Africa, New Mexico, after the city paid out more than $300,000, because an officer had killed a burglary suspect, the officer in question was named Officer for the month. So the question is not whether racism exists in this country. The question becomes, what are we going to do about? What are we going to do? I'm right here in the heart of Dallas. And the Dallas Morning News does not have a senior writer on this Metropolitan Staff. How are you going to cover our community? Get real. And it's true across this country. And I know that it's not an accident that the kind of people that hide in these newsrooms in this country are quite different from the journalists they hide when I started 27 years ago. Nathan Hare wrote a book in the 1966 called Black Angles Saxon. Hello.

And I think that's what they're trying to hide now. Black scanned that people are afraid to go in the housing project. Why are you there? Why are you there? If you can't go out and cover our communities, who will? And that's the obligation we have. The discussion, we have to talk about the images we have and our role in them. And what about you? If your assignment here tells you to go do a store on welfare and you go find somebody black. All these TV programs we can find that one brother with a plastic bag on his head. One go to talking about he be seeing this and he be saying that. Why is it that's the only people we can find? And we have an obligation because some of us are brainwashed as well. We're talking about images and you have an opportunity to do something about it. And part of you aren't actually shriking for your responsibility.

Even when Tupac was about to die, he was trying to reach out. He had set up 800 number for kids and trying to do some community. But he couldn't get away from a thug image. But the question, even when we talk about, we're not talking about whether Tupac was screwing notorious B.I.G's wife. Whether it's East Coast versus West Coast. Whether it's Shug Night was doing, turning people upside down. It is recognizable, death row. Either it's not even about whether Tupac is still alive. I mean, I don't know why y'all got that for him. I mean, it's bad enough you got these white people running around until my Elvis is alive. Now we're going to join them. I guess they'll help a concert. But like Tupac said, I ain't mad at you. The larger issue is that I was reading an estimate set of rap music accounts for more than 600 million dollars a year. I think that's conservative.

And the larger issue is that these white owned companies are making the money not Shug Night. And they're saying that we can use the B word to talk about our mamas and our sisters, but not there. And what are we doing about it? A red American demographics. As I said, kids, you got to read everything. And they pointed out that 75% of all rap records and CDs, you can tell my age here, are purchased by white. And see, we sent these confused signals to our kids. We tell them, look, the way you dress and talk is in. Look at your commercials on television. You can do white boys and head back with them, pants falling off the butt. Everybody want to adopt a black style. And then you come to school and said, you can't talk that way. You can't dress that way. You're confused. But the black culture, the white's copied, and that's what they make the money. And we're portrayed as a victim.

So this is very, very important. Because what has happened is it has spilled over to our society. And so now we have all this violence in our community. And by young teenage rappers who grew up in the suburbs, by the way, trying to play out these roles. They did not go up in Harlem. He grew up in Long Island, Roosevelt. Now these rappers grew up in white planes. They didn't go up in Harlem. They didn't go up in Brooklyn. So they're playing to these images. And now we have our kids trying to play out these roles. Everybody else is making money. And so we got to redefine this. And this is part of a larger struggle. A struggle for who will define our leaders? I got into it with Ed Koch. I was at Columbia University. Ed Koch said he liked my cover that we adorn Clarence Thomas in.

And I told him I didn't give three damn about what he liked it or not. I am not right for Ed Koch. I am right for my people. That's why we say Black American News Magazine. We say White American News Magazine. That's why we have BET. We call it White WET. I'm not going to apologize for that. And he could have the speech talking to some of these brain dig Negro conservatives saying that if JC Watts couldn't apologize to Jesse Jackson, emerged can apologize to Clarence Thomas. Now I don't know how many y'all heard on these stories, but my answer was and continues to be. He has a better chance of finding a virgin and a maternity ward to get me to apologize to Clarence Thomas. I don't apologize when I'm right. And I don't back down when I'm right.

And I don't let other people decide for me who should represent me. And they want to give this funny argument about the, that should be diversity in the Black community. You're right. There is diversity. But these hand-picked people nobody ever heard of, no one ever heard of them to carry their water. And I'm supposed to accept them as my leader. And I don't think so. But don't play that. I will decide for myself who my leaders are. And this is a fake argument. Like we want diversity on Supreme Court. That white folks got eight out of nine seats. And if I had eight seats, I would give you diversity. But I got one. Don't have that. How can I get diversity? When you got somebody who lied, and say he would represent Black people when he was there. You have somebody who can say that he objects to a high-tech lynching. When, in fact, had he gone back to Georgia not that long ago,

he would have gotten an old-fashioned lynching had he gone with his wife. So those are the issues about clearance times. And they want to say like they have a monopoly on family values. I don't think so. After the Americans are very conservative. There are a lot of things. We believe in family values. We believe, and boy, don't go into some neighborhood and have a poll on death penalty. They'll kill you and dig you up and kill you again. But we are not conservative on civil rights. And the difference between these clowns today and the old line, Black Republicans like Arthur Fletcher and Bill Coleman, is that they never sold out. That they maintain that we're entitled to civil rights. And this new bunch, you ought to say you can buy them. You can lease them. And cancel the lease. And it doesn't stop there. We have to decide who our heroes and our heroes are going to be.

And that's not OJ Simpson. And it also means that you don't just embrace people and bring them back when they mess over the whole community. OJ had nothing to do with us? Nothing. He can just have a white wife, shed to be white, blonde, and blue eyes. What are some of the issues? I don't know how far in advance that you are actually put that particular month's magazine to bed. But some of the issues that have made it into the magazine and some of the issues that will be coming up that you want to explore. Well, we've done a lot of things in the past, particularly civil rights report card, where we hold lawmakers accountable. We've done some notorious covers on Clarence Thomas, been the most controversial one. I've never had them. It was a long, jockey, last November, and before that it was a hanker around. And you know, covers ought to get people to pick them up.

They are provocative. And my idea is if I can get you to pick up a magazine, I'll make you want to like it. And so that is to get it in your hand first. We have a current story now, Maxine Wars, new chair of the CBC. The next cover story where I haven't told anybody about this, but it's really one of my staff members two years ago, and she had suggested our doughnut story on Spellman and Morehouse, that four basketball players at Morehouse have been accused of rape. And so she graduated from Spellman Magnum-Polate, so I've sent her back at Spellman to cover that story and have a personal story in there. So it'll be a very, very powerful story. Similar to the one we had a year ago, we had Don Kimba Smith, was a young lady, a peripheral member of a drug ring, didn't sell the drug, didn't use the drugs, because a boyfriend did. She has a mandatory 24 years in life. She's in prison. She's 24 years old as a 24-year sentence. And that talks about some of the eels of mandatory sentencing. And of course, we did the CIA crack stuff, not like everybody else, because this is big debate about whether the CIA

was involved or not. The larger question is, what happened to this community? And so we sent a reporter back to those communities and say, let's talk about the people in the community. Those kinds of things we've done. How do you make the switch on Sunday being a part of these keys? These keys, basically commentary, talk show, and the emergent editor-in-chief position. Well, they both play well. That's fair. I mean, I'm basing around my mouth. Basically, it's about issues of concern African Americans. There'll be some issues we'll cover, or plan a cover to magazine, or something they would. So it's really not a much of a transition. I'm a print person. I've been in print for 27 years. But TV is a powerful, powerful medium. And you have people come up to you to start talking to me. Like they know you. And you met them before your life. I had one lady in an airport saying, you come into my bedroom every Sunday. I said, well, I don't know anything about it. Because it's one way. So I messed the power of it. But I also, because of that medium, I think I can also draw more people to my magazines. So it works well together.

George E. Curry, Editor-in-Chief, Emerge Magazine. We will conclude our conversation with Mr. Curry on next week's program. If you have a question or comment, or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, write us. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer, David Alvarez. I'm Johnny O. Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. And please join us again next week. 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. Hansen, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America. I've been asked to be merged into me as a best job in the world. I have absolutely no plans to be right now. I'm excited about it. I've now been in the South of full years. And I want to make it consistent and make it better. NABJ's Region 7 conference with George E. Curry, Editor-in-Chief Emerge magazine this week on in Black America.