The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts, Hank Klibanoff (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff. 7be Race Beat: 1be Press,lbe Civil Rights Struggle, and tbe Awakening ofa Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,2007. 518 pp. ISBN 0679403817 ( cloth), $ 30.00. The press's finest hour,according to authors Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, occurred during the civil rights movement ,when reporters exposed the struggle between the segregationist white South and the region's African Americans who had been promised equality by the Supreme Court and later the Congress. While federal institutions in the nation' s capital laid down and tried to enforce the new policies, local authorities and bigoted citizens across the former Confederacy denied these rights and faced off with black leaders and demonstrators in an effort to thwart the new laws. During this conflict, the national press came into its own taking up the responsibility to show the violent encounters and constitutional violations to a developing national audience. Reporters, editors, and broadcast journalists did so, Roberts and KlibanofF say in their book Ibe Race Beat:Ube Press, ' Ibe Civil Rights Struggle,and tbe Awakening of a Nation, with bravery and a developing ethic that was essential to fulfilling those promises of equality. Quite likely no better writer exists to present this story than the lead author, Gene Roberts. A North Carolina native and reporter during the era, Roberts went from covering the conflict in person to an exemplary career in journalism. He served as editor of both the Philadelphia Inquirer and more recently the Netu York Times, his departments at both publications receiving a host of Pulitzer Prizes under his watch. Joining him is a former coworker and now managing editor ofthe Atlanta Constitution,Hank Klibanoti who has also received noted awards for writing . Klibanoff,seventeen years younger than Roberts, brings a different perspective . He was working the lower echelons of the press as a fourteenyear old newspaper delivery boy in Alabama when Martin Luther King delivered his " I Have a Dream Speech. He found himself · asking how the papers he delivered then managed to overlook the confrontations in the streets ofMontgomery and Birmingham. 71} e Race Beat begins with Swedish sociologist G unnar Myrdal's 1940s study of the race question in America that provided some of the basis for the Brown U. Board of Education decision, and ends with the turbulent year of 1968, as Martin Luther King fell from an assassin's bullet and the nonviolent movement gave way to black p ower. Falling between is a dense, wellresearched ,frontseat account of how the media covered the movement, a history with only : i touch of memoir,despite the firsthand knowledge of both authors. With journalistic instinct,they wanted to get this history right. They do so by exploring beyond the reporter's usual sources of interviews and old news accounts · and investigating the race beat through the correspondence of past editors, oral histories ,and a host of secondary works. In addition to their primary thesisthe fourth estate brought a national consciousness to the race issue that ultimately resulted in breaking down color barriersRoberts and Klibanoff emphasize the dangers that journalists faced while covering what had become the story and they reveal how civil rights leaders relied on these WINTER 2007 81 THE RACE BEAT 0* 4' 1 k, N: ROBER.' 31». 15.[ 1* 50. BOOK REVIEWS professionals. Reporters, even with their efforts to expose resistance at Little Rock and Birmingham to their readers and viewers as objectively as possible, were soon viewed as much the enemy among southern segregationists as were the Supreme Court and the Kennedys. The authors'upclose and personal description of a correspondent 's point of view at schoolfront protests or at sitins is eyeopening even to historians of civil rights. These journalists , the authors point out, were forced to conceal their notepads and dress down to blend in with the crowd. One broadeaster added a special steel handle to his television camera to double as a makeshift defense weapon. ' Ihe dangers went beyond those in the field. Major newspapers and television networks faced advertising losses and lawsuits after opting to report southern officials'inaction toward lawless segregationists . It was during this era that news organizations explored,and...