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From the University of Texas at Austin,
KUT Radio, this is in Black America.

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My family had the most effect
on my becoming a journalist.

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I came from a family of.

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Serious minded scholars.

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I have five brothers and sisters,
all of whom are holders of advanced

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degrees in one field or another.

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One of my brothers is a holder
of two earned PhD degrees.

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So as you can see, ours is
a family heavily oriented

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toward education and service.

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I grew.

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Wanting most of all to write
and spent most of my childhood

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experimenting with writing and
concluded that it was the world for me.

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I saw so much that I thought needed
to be described, communicated,

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explored, explained, and so forth.

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So that just became my outlet,

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the late Robert C. Maynard.

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Journalist, newspaper, publisher,
editor, and former owner of

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the Oakland Tribune newspaper.

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Manan was a charismatic leader who
changed the face of American journalism

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and built a four decade career on the
cornerstone of editorial integrity,

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community involvement, improved education,
and the importance of the family.

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He was also co-founder of the Institute
for Journalism Education, a nonprofit

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corporation dedicated to expanding
opportunities for minority journalists

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at the nation's newspapers in the
1980s mainly began a twice weekly

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syndicated newspaper column in which
he transformed National, international.

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To dinner table discussions
of right and wrong.

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When he bought the Oakland Tribune
in 1983, he became the first

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African American in this country
to own a major daily newspaper.

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But Maynard had a career full
of firsts from being the first

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African American national newspaper
correspondent to being the first African

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American newspaper editor in chief.

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I am Johnny Johansson Jr. And welcome to
another edition of In Black America on

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this week's program, the Life and Legacy
of Robert C. Maynard in Black America.

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Before I go on to say how that particular
movement affected me personally.

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I wanna say something about our profession
that I think is an indictment of sorts.

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You know, we still have a ways to go
toward full equality for blacks in

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America, but I think it's unfortunate
that our media has not made it clear to

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the American people that what happened
between 1950 and 1980, let's say in

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America, 30 years is probably one
of the most phenomenal revolutions.

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That's occurred in human history to
take the condition that blacks were in

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in those days, and to see the number
of barriers that fell and the number

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of conditions that changed, and the
number of opportunities that present

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themselves today versus in that day.

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And it's a remarkable march.

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And black Americans should
take greater pride in what

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we have already accomplished.

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That does not mean we should.

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Slacking in what we feel we need to
continue to accomplish, but we should

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not allow ourselves or deny ourselves,
I should say, we shouldn't deny

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ourselves a justly deserved compliment.

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The late Robert C. Maynard was a
dynamic leader in American journalism

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throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

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He was the first African American to own
a major metropolitan daily newspaper.

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Manning was the publisher of a struggling
Oakland Tribune from 1983 until 1992.

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Through that newspaper and the
Institute for Journalism Education,

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which he co-founded in 1976, he
became instrumental in training

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and placing minority journalists
in important positions nationwide.

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Born on June 17th, 1937
in Brooklyn, New York.

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Mannar was the son of immigrants
from Barbados, interested

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in writing At an early days.

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He frequently cut class
at Boys High School.

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To hang out at the editorial office of a
black weekly newspaper, the New York Age.

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In 1967, Manny was hired by the Washington
Post as national correspondent, the

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first African American to hold that
position on any major newspaper.

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In 19 70 70, left the Washington Post
and moved to the University of California

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Berkeley to found the Institute
for Journalism Education in 1979.

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He was hired by GT as editor in the
newly acquired Oakland Tribune newspaper.

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When he purchased the Oakland
Tribune in 1983, he became the first

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African American in this country
to own a major daily newspaper.

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In 1985, Manny was the recipient
of the WIC Carter Redick Award from

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the College of Communication at
the University of Texas at Austin,

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Langston had just put on a plague
called Simple Sings the Blues, and um.

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Jimmy Baldwin was just about the
published notes of a native son.

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This was a period in Afro-American
history that I was privileged to be

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the witness to, which was the moral
preparation for the civil rights movement.

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That's what was going on in the middle to
late fifties when I was traveling Among.

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This group of writers, they were raising
the moral questions that would set the

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stage for Martin Luther King, for Malcolm
X, and for the whole struggle that then

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ensued the history of the movement up to
that time is important to keep in context.

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Let me just go back a hundred years
to the, at the end of the Civil War.

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There was an attempt to bring blacks into
some sort of, um, economic participation

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and political participation in the South
through reconstruction, as it was called.

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Reconstruction collapsed in about
the 1880s, and little by little

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black people slipped into a status
of semi servitude, yes, no longer

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slaves, but no, not quite free.

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And in that context, came along.

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A Supreme Court ruling called
Plessy versus Ferguson, which

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decreed that as long as the state
provided equal facilities for

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blacks, they could be separate.

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And that doctrine, separate but equal
is what prevailed from 1896 to 1954.

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Separate, but equal was just a code word
for segregation of the rankest sort.

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There was nothing the least but
equal about the treatment of

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blacks and whites in the south.

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At that time, during World War ii,
black Americans went off, as you know,

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and distinguished themselves in war.

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And died fighting for the
freedom of this country.

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It was the people who came home
in 1945 having fought and bled

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and seen their buddies die for
democracy and freedom elsewhere.

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Who began to.

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Plot the course for the
overthrow of Plessy.

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They were lawyers primarily, you know,
people who went to law school and set up

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shop at Howard University and used that as
the launching pad for this assault on the

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second class status of blacks in America.

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And as that battle began to heat up
in the middle fifties, young writers

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and established writers began to
try to define the black experience.

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For public understanding so that
white people could understand better.

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This was the period when Jimmy Baldwin
wrote so eloquently about the status

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of blacks and in the minds of whites.

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He said, you know, a
nigga is not a person.

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A nigga is an idea.

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Why do you need a nigga?

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You know, what is it in your
life that makes you need to see

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somebody else's being inferior?

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And they kept probing that question.

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And of course.

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You know, Langston was, was
going at it from another side

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with the stiletto of satire.

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And other writers would, were
grappling with it in different ways.

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And of course, the writers and the,
the clergy and the activists of

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various kinds all finally began to
sing off of one song sheet, as it

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were into the middle of the 1950s.

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And so the Supreme Court.

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Clearly hearing that the moral outcry
had reached a level where this could

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no longer be tolerated, finally
declared segregation legally void, and

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replaced the evil doctrine of Plessy
against Ferguson with the new doctrine

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of Brown against Board of Education.

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And from that moment there grew the
movement that eventually led to Dr.

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King.

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And others marching on Selma and
from Selma to Montgomery, and that

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ended finally the period of legalized
separation of the races in this country.

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What it did not do is liberate our minds.

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It liberated our bodies.

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We became, at least physically.

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Able to move about freely in American
society, but the presupposition remained

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that we were intellectually still
suffering from the legacy of slavery.

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We were still, our minds were still
enslaved, and so the struggles

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since the sixties has been more
of an intellectual struggle.

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It has been a struggle to establish.

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Our right to be viewed as equal in jobs
that had previously been been regarded

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as strictly white jobs, newspaper
editors, judges, physicians, you know,

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the whole range of places that we had
been denied access in large numbers.

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Well, as we begin to fan out
as it were, from that clo, from

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the enclosure of segregation.

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Into the broad society.

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We discover that we're not all exactly
the same in the way we view the world.

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That, um, to be successful in the
world where you have to learn a

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variety of skills because there
are all sorts of new challenges now

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that we should be working toward.

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And so I see my becoming an editor
and owner of a major daily newspaper.

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As being on the cutting edge of
the opening up of this new arena of

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possibilities for the mind, which I
think is every bit as important as what

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the previous era did to free our bodies.

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You went to work for the
Afro-American in Baltimore.

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And I assume that established you
at a major American newspaper.

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Were you comfortable in coming
to the Post after working at

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the Afro-American in Baltimore?

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Well, I didn't go straight from the post.

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Okay.

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I went first to a
newspaper in Pennsylvania.

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Okay.

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A daily newspaper, the York Gazette.

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Okay.

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And I worked there for six years.

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Then I was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard.

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Then, um, as you say, I met Ben Bradley
while I was at Harvard as a Neiman fellow.

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And he invited me to come and
see him at the Post, and I did.

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And I had no discomfort,
no about coming there.

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I felt very good about it.

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It was a fabulous experience for me.

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You said you learned a particular lesson
and I guess the illustration that they

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used in one of the particular article,
I think it was in Players magazine,

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that you had ridden a person that had
red paint thrown on this automobile.

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Mm-hmm.

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And you somewhat was gonna make
a satire out, that experience.

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Mm-hmm.

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And the editor came to you.

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Well didn't come to you.

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He had whacked your particular story.

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Mm-hmm.

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You came to him and asked him why did he

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Yeah.

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Do this particular,

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yeah.

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Could you expound on that more
as far as making an impression

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on you as a journalist?

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And well start,

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lemme start.

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Sure.

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Lemme tell the whole story
so that everybody will know

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what we're talking about.

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In my first day as a police reporter on
the York Gazette, I went out to cover.

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To do what they call
collecting the police blott.

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You go down to the police headquarters and
you take down all these various complaints

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and so forth, and you write one paragraph
stories about fender benders and so on.

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It's part of your early training,
and I saw one complaint that said

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that John Smith had, uh, complained
to the police that he brought, that

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he had just that Saturday afternoon.

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Bought a brand new Blue Pontiac
convertible and he parked it outside of

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his house overnight, and when he came
out in the morning, somebody had smeared

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red paint all over this brand new car.

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So he complained to the police.

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I wrote down the complaint and
I came back to the office and I

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decided to write a funny story.

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And as I recall it, my story began.

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If John Smith had wanted a
red convertible, he would

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have bought a red convertible.

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Instead, he bought a blue convertible, but
last night somebody tried to paint it red

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da da da, and went on to tell his story.

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Well, after I turned my story in.

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I went back over to the city editor's
desk and I looked over his shoulder and he

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was crossing out all that stuff about if
John Smith had wanted a red convertible.

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And so I said, why did
you take all that out?

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He said, well, let me ask you a question.

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Why did you put it in?

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I said, well, I thought it was funny.

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He said, well, if you're, if
you had been John Smith, would

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you still think it was funny?

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And I stopped and I thought
about it and I said, well, no.

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And he said, well, that's my point.

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He said, when we sit down here to write
stories, we must never allow ourselves

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to indulge in our exercise of humor at
the expense of some ordinary citizen.

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And to me, it was the most
profound single lesson.

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About the impact of what we do.

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It was, it was a lesson that,
as you can tell, has remained

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with me for over 25 years.

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And whenever I think about what we do
as journalists, I always want to ask the

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question, what's the impact on the other
fellow or the other woman, as the case

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may be, what are we doing to people and
shouldn't we be sensitive about that?

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Rather than just say, well, I think
it's funny to ridicule this person.

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Let's have some fun.

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Well, maybe that's not always appropriate.

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You're listening to In Black America with
John L. Hanson Jr. We'll be back with

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more of our conversation in just a moment.

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Now on with our conversation,

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was it easy for you or difficult for
you to be objective when you covered

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the Civil Rights Movement and Dr.

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Martin Luther King?

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Oh, sure.

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It was, it was.

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And um, I tried very hard to avoid
becoming a press agent for the movement.

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Okay.

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I had to cover the news.

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I had to write.

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Balance stories that took into account
that not everybody in the movement was

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perfect, and that not everything, even
everything that Martin Luther King did

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was perfect, that nobody's perfect.

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And even though I had enormous sympathy
for what the movement was trying to

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accomplish, I tried to distinguish the
goals of the movement from the everyday

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behavior of individuals and see that.

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For whatever it was.

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I never allowed in my mind any
source, including Martin Luther

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King to be larger than life.

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What effect covering that movement
have on your life personally today?

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Enormous in the sense that if you
could have seen the condition of the

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political, economic, and social status.

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Of black Americans in the South,
particularly in 1950, which is

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around the time I began to be
aware of things outside myself.

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You wouldn't recognize that condition
versus the condition of blacks today.

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And before I go on to say
how that particular movement

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affected me personally.

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I wanna say something about our profession
that I think is an indictment of sorts.

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You know, we still have a ways
to go toward full equality for

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blacks in America, but I think
it's unfortunate that are, media

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has not made it clear to the American
people that what happened between.

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1950 and 1980, let's say in
America, 30 years is probably one

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of the most phenomenal revolutions
that's occurred in human history.

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To take the condition that blacks
were in in those days, and to see the

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number of barriers that fell and the
number of conditions that changed.

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And the number of opportunities that
present themselves today versus in that

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day, and it's a remarkable march, and
black Americans should take greater pride

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in what we have already accomplished.

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That does not mean we should slacking
in what we feel we need to continue

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to accomplish, but we should not allow
ourselves or deny ourselves, I should say.

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We shouldn't deny ourselves.

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A justly deserved compliment for
what we as a people have done to

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change our own status in a relatively
short period of time, even though

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we know we have a long way to go.

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Part of the way you get there is
through recognizing what you've already

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accomplished, because hope is key.

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To all accomplishments and we have
accomplished more than we generally

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recognize, more than the news media.

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Stop and acknowledge from time to time
as I feel we in the news media should.

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What I saw as a journalist is this, I saw
a people in a condition of almost total

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social and political paralysis, and I saw.

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Black people galvanize their
energies and their forces and focus

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on specific targets and obliterate
those targets and change a condition.

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In 1961, when the sit-ins began
at Greensboro and at um, in

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Nashville, there were probably.

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A dozen black elected officials in there
will be 11 states of the old Confederacy,

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and today there are over 4,000 black
elected officials that's revolutionary.

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All of a sudden, all of these
popularly elected officials

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are seeing their names in print
associated with all sorts of misdeeds.

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Some of them fanciful,
some of them for real.

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And lo and behold, their accusers
were all anonymous and it left a

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very bad taste in the public's mouth.

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The latest surveys show that more
than half the public, 54% will

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discount a story that contains
anonymous sources as unreliable.

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They just won't touch it.

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Will you as an editor accept a
piece with unnamed sources in it?

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None unless it meets a set
of fairly clear standards.

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First of all, there must be an allegation
of a violation of public trust.

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In other words, it's gotta be serious.

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Number two,

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it must be information that could
not be obtained on the record

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with people's names attached.

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Number three.

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Some senior editor of the newspaper must
know the name of the alleged source.

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And four, there can't be just one source.

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There have to be two independent
corroborative sources

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and those four standards.

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Yes.

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You spoke earlier today about credibility
within the journalism profession.

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Two particular incidents have particularly
affected the credibility of black

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journalists, the Janet Cook incident,
and recently the Jaime incident with

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Milton Coleman of the Washington Post and
the Presidential County, Jesse Jackson.

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In your opinion, has that
drastically hurt black journalists

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overall, those two incidents?

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No, not drastically.

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The Janet Cook case looked as if
people could say, well, gee, there's

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something unique about it, but there
wasn't anything unique about it.

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Um, in very short order, we had the case
of Michael Dailey, of the New York Daily

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News going off to Belfast, inviting a
story that he saw a group of British

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troops do something that didn't happen.

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And then we had, uh, Christopher Jones
write an article for the New York Times

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magazine about Camp Chi, and it turned
out that he was in Madrid all the

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time that he said he was in Cambodia.

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Then you had, uh, the case
of the AP reporter writing a

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strange freeway phantom story.

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So there have been a number
of other fabrications.

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So, no, I wouldn't say that there's
anything about that that speaks

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specifically to black journalists.

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In the case of the so-called Jaime Town
incident, I think there's something

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to be said about that, that I have
not seen or heard a great deal.

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And so let me tell you what I
think, and I haven't said this

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because I wanna say is, is this
a unique incident where you're.

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Privy to information off the record.

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Well, that's what I wanna talk

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about.

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Okay.

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What I wanna say about that
incident is this, what it reflected

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was the inexperience of both
men at what they were doing.

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Okay.

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Jesse Jackson is inexperienced
in elective politics.

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He has been accustomed
to being in an arena.

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In which he could function without
the usual checks and balances

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that go into political reporting.

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It's just a different world.

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And he didn't know that.

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And so he thought he could do some
things that he did in another arena,

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in another setting and get away with
it in this much different setting.

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So it was a case of a learning
experience for him about how

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you open your mouth around
journalists when you're a candidate.

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Now, having said that, I have to say on
the other side that Milton was equally

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inexperienced in such matters, and
what Milton didn't understand is that

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in every political campaign, there are
always certain areas of understanding

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between reporters and candidates
about the sorts of things that will

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be allowed to be off the record.

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Now in the case of such obnoxious
language as Jaime Town, I don't think

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there ought ever to be a rule for that
sort of thing to be permissible for

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candidates to use that kind of language.

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Because if it's okay for Jesse
to say, Jaime Town, uh, what

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do you do if you're equally.

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Beholden to a white candidate and they
say, uh, a racist or a sexist remark.

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Should a white journalist
not report that he's a putty?

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Now he feels as if he's got
a certain camaraderie with

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the candidate and vice versa.

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Justice Jesse felt he had
with the black reporters.

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Suppose such a white candidate starts
using racial epithets in those private

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circumstances or antisemitic epithets.

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Should that be okay?

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Should the press, should the reporters
close to him say, oh, well it's off.

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All of his racial epithets
are off the record.

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That doesn't work either, does it?

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No.

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Okay.

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So what Milton needed to know
is, well, how do you handle that?

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And the way I think he should have
handled it is when he heard Jackson

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use that sort of language the first
time in the so-called off the record

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setting, whatever that might have been.

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He should have said to him, Hey,
look, I find that offensive.

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I think that that even speaks
to the character of this

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campaign, and I don't think,

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since this is off the record, I don't
think I will report it the very first

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time, but I want you to know that if I
determine that that's a pattern with you,

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that you do use that sort of language
all the time, it may become part of

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your profile as I have to report it.

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And I think that would've cleaned it
up, but he didn't have the experience

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to know that that's what you do.

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We call it in political
reporting, one bite of the apple.

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Every guy, every candidate, every
person, man or woman, should have

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one chance in the early stages
of a campaign to make a mistake.

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'cause we all do without us blowing it up.

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But if we find that that mistake.

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So called at first, begins
to reveal itself as a pattern

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that tells us something about
the character of the person.

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Then.

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We should put 'em on notice that we
intend to use that material in a story.

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The late Robert C. Maynard,
former editor and publisher of

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the Oakland Tribune newspaper,
Maynard died on August 17th, 1993.

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He was 56.

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If you have questions, comments,
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00:27:43,010 --> 00:27:48,199
Black America programs, email
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00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:52,340
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00:27:52,909 --> 00:27:57,199
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00:28:03,054 --> 00:28:07,314
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00:28:07,314 --> 00:28:09,655
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00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,270
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00:28:13,230 --> 00:28:17,250
The views and opinions expressed on
this program are not necessary though

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00:28:17,250 --> 00:28:22,320
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of Texas at Austin in Black America

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00:28:27,149 --> 00:28:31,440
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Until we have the opportunity again
for technical producer David Alvarez.

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I'm Johnny Hansen, Jr. Thank
you for joining us today.

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00:28:39,990 --> 00:28:42,060
Please join us again next week.

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00:28:42,090 --> 00:28:45,870
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00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:57,960
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00:29:07,525 --> 00:29:10,030
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