The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement

Wilson F. (Bill) Minor and the New Orleans Times-Picayune

Wilson F.(Bill) Minor andthe New Orleans Times-Picayune Lawrence N. Strout Decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), Wilson F. (Bill) Minor recounted in a 15 September 1999 interview how the two pieces of federal legislation, after years of struggle, unrest and violence in Mississippi, changed the state forever.1 For the ten years leading up to those pieces of legislation, Minor witnessed, reported and commented about the turmoil associated with AfricanAmericans fighting for the same rights as whites. Minor was no radical. He saw himself as a reporter, not a crusading columnist pushing for civil rights and desegregation. However, Minor used his weekly "Eyes on Mississippi " columns (and some news dispatches) in the Times-Picayune to subtly, and in the 1960$ more overtly, discredit segregationist positions and promote integration.2 From the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education in 1954 until the passage of the Voting Blights Act in 1965, Minor's distaste for segregationists and their leaders in Mississippi government became progressively more apparent. A supporter of black civil rights and school integration, his writings in the New Orleans Times-Picayune from the Mississippi paper's bureau in Jackson steadily reflected a more "liberal " stance as the 19605 commenced. Most important, though, Minor wrote news accounts of what actually happened during the civil rights Lawrence N. Strout movement rather than espousing the (white) government position, which advocated keeping blacks as second class citizens. This is no small contribution and, given the racial climate in Mississippi, took great courage at times. Additionally, Minor was not an editor of a Mississippi newspaper. He was a front-line reporter and columnist for the most widely circulated daily in southern Louisiana, which made him an important voice informing the people of the greater New Orleans area and South Mississippi of what washappening throughout Mississippi. Wilson F. Minor was born in Hammond, Louisiana, and grew up in nearby Bogalusa. He graduated from Tulane University and in 1942 was hired by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. After a stint serving his country in World War II, Minor was rehired in 1947 by the Times-Picayune and assigned to Jackson asits Mississippi correspondent. In Jackson from 1947 through the 1990S,3 Minor watched and reported the transformation of Mississippi from the Old South to the New—a transformation that many would argue is still a work-in-progress. Minor's work won respect at both the regional and national level. Minor wrote for national publications such as the New Tork Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Newsday. In the Greenwood Commonwealth of 4 October 1987, Mississippi editor John Emmerich paid tribute to Minor's accomplishments on Mississippi State University's acceptance of the longtime journalist's papers. Emmerich noted that in the early and mid-1960s, Minor "covered every tough civil rights story at a time when manyreporters were considered the enemy" of segregationist white Mississippians. Minor has received nearly every major journalism award short of the Pulitzer Prize. And manyof his awardshave been, at least in part, related to the fair and accurate reporting and commentary about the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Looking back on his long career in a 1999 interview, Minor marveled at Mississippi's transformation since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Brown decision on 17 May 1954. The "conventional wisdom" of the state's white leadership, Minor recalled, was that desegregation in Mississippi would not occur "in our lifetime." An 18 May 1954 TimesPicayune editorial reflected the common wisdom of the day, arguing that "the decision will do no service either to education or racial accommodation ." It contended that the court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that 210 Wilson F.(Bill) Minor and the New Orleans Times-Picayune "equal facilities" satisfied the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that "approximately equal" schools for blacksexisted. Brown's declaration that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" wassimply not true, the editorial concluded. Minor reported in his "Eyes of Mississippi" column of 23 May 1954 that "Negro and white observers" believed that the U.S. Supreme Court decision would result in "no immediate changes in the historic pattern of separate school facilities in Mississippi." Minor wrote that anti-desegregation "government forces" would probably prevent enforcement of the court decision "for some years to come, if ever." Minor quoted State Superintendent of...