I recently wrote about putting the story and picture of a civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, in the Palm Beach Times in 1963 and the reaction of one old-timer to putting a picture of a black man Page 1.
A friend, also a newsman, expressed astonishment: "Surely, the management then wasn't that awful."
They were, but even they knew the times were changing and they ignored my breaking one of the most sacred Southern traditions.
A few years earlier, I'd been working at the Orlando Sentinel during the segregation lunch counter sit-ins. I was told, though I never actually saw the memo, that the publisher had sent a note around to senior editors saying that under no circumstances was a sit-in story to appear on page 1 because, "I'm not giving those niggers any more publicity than I have to."
In the year that I was there, no sit-in story ever appeared on Page 1.
Posted by Deck at January 29, 2007 02:08 PM