Interview with Linn Washington

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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Linn Washington
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Lynn Bijou
Date of interview: 5 November 2021
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(Start of Interview)

SM: 00:03
Alright Linn, you there? Linn? Oh, hello, Linn, are you there? Oh my god. Okay, there is something wrong, see with the phone here. Hold on. Okay. Thank you very much for agreeing to do the interview.

LW: 00:24
Sure, I am glad to do it.

SM: 00:26
And, and my first, first question Linn is could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your growing up years where you went to school, high school, college, your early influences in life.

LW: 00:39
Okay. I-I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was born on November 17th, 1950. And I grew up in Pittsburgh, I grew up in the east end of Pittsburgh, the Homewood Brushton section. Lipton Upland Street, went to elementary school and high school in Pittsburgh and after I graduated from high school in 1968, I went to school in Ohio for a year then transferred back to, well transferred to Cheyney University, right outside of Philadelphia, they subsequently changed to, or transferred to Temple University, I graduated and started working in the news business. I- my college training was in television news directing, never got a job there, got a job in a newspaper business and have been doing newspaper reporting on and off for over 40 years. And for the last 24 years, I have been a professor of Journalism at Temple University.

SM: 01:49
Yeah, when, obviously, you are a boomer. And [crosstalk] a lot of people that I have interviewed do not like the term being labeled into a generation. So, we have had, we have had a lot of that. But, when you think of the 1960s and early 1970s, that period, really between (19)60 and (19)75, what comes to mind, what are the good thoughts and then what are the bad thoughts?

LW: 02:14
Well, it was one of from my, perspective, it was one of the more expansive periods of, of American history, I really felt that America was finally reaching its promise of equity for all, only to see a retrenchment in the (19)70s. But the (19)60s was, for me a great period to grow up in, very expansive. Very cool. [chuckles] I really enjoyed looking back on what I have read off history, and what I have lived. After that time, I-I do not think I would want to grow up in another period than the (19)60s was really the formative time.

SM: 03:00
Now, of course, we know what was going on in the late (19)70s. About, you know, that-that period when they were trying to move back from what had been accomplished in the-the sick mid- mid (19)60s and very early in the (19)70s. But, when you were, what were the years that you were a Cheyney?

LW: 03:19
I was a Cheyney from 1970 to (19)71 ish. And I, I did a year and a half of Cheyney. So that would have been (19)70 through the first semester - oh spring semester, because in fall, I guess (19)71 I went to, went into Temple [University].

SM: 03:38
Now, when you were Cheyney for that one year, you know, that is a crucial time, 1970. And was-was there a lot of activisms on the campus at that time?

LW: 03:49
There was sufficient amount of activism, but the activism had somewhat chilled by the time I got there, cause in the, I am not sure if it would have probably been the semester prior to me getting there-there was a lot of activisms, and the university came down hard. And some of the activists ended up at the Delaware County Prison- which was up the hill from Cheyney. So, it did have a chilling effect from student activism.

SM: 04:12
[laughs]

LW: 04:18
Yeah-yeah. And I ended up at Cheney because of student activism at the university that I went to out in Ohio. And let us just say as the Marines you know, marines never retreat-

SM: 04:18
Right. That-that happened at Westchester University too. [laughs] Right.

LW: 04:34
But they just did attacks at a rear.

SM: 04:38
Right. When you were there did you-

LW: 04:41
[crosstalk]

SM: 04:42
When you-

LW: 04:43
I will admit I had to make a strategic retreat. [laughter]

SM: 04:46
When you were at Cheyney, did you know that Coretta Scott King's sister was there teaching?

LW: 04:51
No-no.

SM: 04:53
Yeah, she was, she was, she was there- for many-many years teaching theatre. You know, the-

LW: 04:55
I did not know that. Wow.

SM: 04:59
-the boomers are kind of no longer young. Obviously, if the put in that period (19)46 to (19)64. They are now, the front edge are now in their early (19)70s.

LW: 05:09
Oh absolutely.

SM: 05:11
When you view the generation from this timeframe, what were their major accomplishments and you feel, you feel and what were their major failures?

LW: 05:21
Oh, jeez, that is a very wide-ranging question, I think some of the major accomplishments were to continue to expand the, the middle class. I think there was a lot of learning that-that went on, both individually and collectively in terms of society in the (19)60s, early (19)70s. Where I think the generation failed, is that we, did not continue to push for the what was considered the values at that time, in the (19)60s. I mean, it was, you know, a lot of talk about, the rat race and, and resisting the, you know, just the work all the time, you know, sort of the materialism. A lot of that seemingly was going from what you needed to do to something that you probably should not do. And then there was that boomerang back, I guess it is pretty much started in the early, (19)80s, rather, with the Reagan administration-

SM: 06:31
Right.

LW: 06:31
And emphasis on me, individualism versus collectivism. So, I just see a failing of the baby boomer generation to really push and try to do all that they could to ensure that American democracy work the way that was said to work. And I am not only speaking in terms of the promises that have yet to be fulfilled when you are talking about persons of color. But I am just talking about society in general. We look at things like now, we are having a horrific problem, and almost an existential problem with, with climate change. I mean, the jet stream is breaking down. I just read this morning, again, that the Gulf Stream is breaking down, and having horrendous, floods and wildfires. I remember in the late (19)70s, when then, President Jimmy Carter had issued an edict that, to increase the gas mileage on cars. And he has faced a weathering pushback. Now, if that had had, that had happened, then we may have been in a position where vehicles would be less polluting. So, this focus on money and the politicization of things that should never be politicized, has now put us in a situation where I am quite concerned about what world my grandchildren will-

SM: 07:01
Yes.

LW: 07:30
Grow up in and what their children will face and endure.

SM: 08:23
Yeah, I got some other questions later in the interview that are going to deal with some of these things. And, you know, that you probably had this sense when you were a student there, I was just a couple of years ahead of you, that, that we were living in a period of which was so unique and so different than, you know, things were finally revealed to us that we hadn't heard about a whole lot in the (19)50s when I was, growing up as kids, and about all the bad things that were happening. And then, we heard about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, what Dr. King's doing, we learn all about, more about the KKK, we learned the truth about Native Americans and Indians on TV. Were, we see all these things in the (19)60s, you know, that, you know, we are going to live up to what our constitution says, you know, we the people means, we the people grow, we are all one. I, I just wonder if that, this utopian mentality that many of the boomers had at that particular time that we, that is our generation is going to be the change agent for the betterment of society in just about every way. Was it, was basically a dream? Hot in the moment or, you know, you know, what has happened to this generation as they have gotten older?

LW: 09:41
Well, I think the belief that change was coming, you know, change was right around the corner that, that things would change. substantively. That was, definitely in the year. It was a seer, and it was really heartfelt, but I did not think are afoot here. Number one, that sentiment was not held by the majority of those in that generation. It was always a small number of people, but because of media coverage, and that sort of thing, it gave an aura over the whole generation, which was not there. And I think, one thing that people who felt that and were actually working, as they perceived as change agents, did not recognize the resiliency in the intransigence of quote, the system. There is, you know a lot of inertia to keep things the way they are a lot of inertia, to maintain the status quo. And this effort and desire to change bumped up against that and lost, a lot of people may have wanted to do some change. But the, the demands and dictates of life 101-

SM: 11:01
Yes.

LW: 11:01
Have a job, keep a roof over your head, maintain a family, it is hard to maintain any sense of activism and change when you know, the notion is to conform, and to just, you know, survive. And I think that is what happened with a lot of people. Hey, you know, we, we love that [inaudible] woman in, in 1978. But now it is, I mean, 1968, but now it is (19)78, I have two kids, I have a car.

SM: 11:32
Right.

LW: 11:32
They need to be in, your car needs to be paid for at the end of the month, rent, mortgage, whatever. And more people just got sucked up into the system. And then it was just you know; they were parts of the status quo versus the change agent. And the change may have been still within their heart. But do I rock the boat? Do I risk losing what little I have-

SM: 11:34
Yes-yes.

LW: 11:47
-to effectuate change that may or may not be long lasting? So, very few people want to be at, at the front of the line of change-

SM: 12:10
You-you raise-

LW: 12:11
-they want to [inaudible] from it, but they do not want to be, possibly penalized by seeking those changes.

SM: 12:17
You are making a truth to power statement when you are talking about the boomers. And then the percentage of those that were really activists, that even the literature states that maybe only maybe 5 to 7 percent, of the boomer generation was ever involved in activism all, in all the movements. And so, I-I want to raise something that I know Tom Hayden raised when he came to our campus many years back before he passed. And that is when he came to talk about student power, student power, student power to me in the (19)60s or young people power was about empowerment, the term empowerment, not about just I want power. And, and so he tried to explain it to the generation of the early 2000s, that, you know, controlling student government budgets and giving money out to you know, you make decisions on finances and everything to your fellow students. They felt they had all the power they wanted. Now that, that was not the power of the (19)60s, as you recall, the students were not found and wanting to be on making decisions with the Presidents, you know, every, everything, they want, wanted to get on certain committees, make issues, issues dealing with a curriculum, it, it was a sense of empowerment, that my voice mattered, as opposed to just searching for power. And, and when I look at all the movements, and I like your thoughts on this, whether it be the Black Power movement, the-the women, the gay and lesbian, Chicano environmental movement, it was all more about you know, my, I want my voice to be heard at the table.

LW: 14:00
I get the sense that it was, empowerment versus power. Power has the, the individualistic connotations that you know, I have power and I can wield it, versus change for the larger society. And that is when I saw the sentiment from, from the (19)60s that, there was a sense that we could collectively we can make the world better, more livable world. If that means just being kinder to people or at that point, you know, Nathan environmentalism, just trying to, you know I am not saying this in a socialistic way, but just try to get out of the materialistic world that many people felt, was detrimental to the larger society. So, this notion of individual power. I mean, we certainly did not feel that in the student activism that I was involved in. Definitely did not feel that individual sense, was more aligned with the quote unquote black power movement than the civil rights movement. But it was always about the collective, the collective good versus the individual good because at certain points, people were willing to make some material sacrifices. Yeah, so.

SM: 15:22
Yeah, one of the, what, the term watershed has come off many times there were things in one's life, especially when people were younger, that there was a watershed event or moment that changed their life. What was your watershed moment in your life?

LW: 15:41
The watershed moment in my life? Oh, gosh, there was a couple of, I guess one that [chuckles] has turned out really, changed my life was the 1968 Olympics.

SM: 15:57
Oh yeah.

LW: 15:58
When, Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their protests and the, the other athletes made their protests. At that time, I was a student athlete, not of Olympic caliber, let me be clear. [laughs]

SM: 16:12
Did not you get the gold medal, Linn? I thought you got the gold medal. [laughter]

LW: 16:20
I may have had, gold medal, aspirations, but I had lead metal feet so, [laughter] I was not as swift as them. But it really had an, an impact on me, that they would not only, have the excellence in athleticism, but they had that feeling in their heart to use their platform to try to advance the change. Now, I am just not talking about that event itself that took place down in Mexico City, but, I closely followed the build up to that end, and all of the discussions and how that parallel into, you know, other things that were going on in the country, the fight around Muhammad Ali, and his stance on, I guess the Vietnam War, the efforts to try to, have some very serious examinations and re-examinations of racism, both institutional and individual. So, that protests really struck me close to, to the heart. And, as a consequence of that, I tried to organize the track team at the University that I was at, and talk about running, running up against the status quo. It was a 100-yard dash that ended into a brick wall, although I ran hurdles but-

SM: 17:41
[laughs] Yeah.

LW: 17:44
-so, so my activism fizzled real quick, I was actually thrown off the team, thus, you know, no track scholarship and, and then there were, you know just a couple of other events that happened at the university that really changed me around. I, remember, in my one semester, I had an anthropology class and the professor on the first day of class, was going through the evolution of mankind, and said that negroes, she did not say niggers, but she said, negroes were descended from monkeys, and that we actually had a pre tarsal bone. Where we once had tails and, those tails dropped off. And she, specifically [chuckles] said that if, it was not for her desire not to embarrass the white women in the class, she would have asked the few black men in the class to drop their pants to show these, bone, you know, where the bones used to be. And myself and the other black guys in the class, we looked at each other, and, [chuckles] you know, a couple of extra [inaudible], I mean, so it was like, "Okay, no, no, no. We are not going to get up here and smack this woman." We are going to fight her on her turf, which is the intellectual turf. So, we all did well in the class, including on the final, I had the highest score in the class. And then my colleagues were in the, you know, descending order. Purposely to make sure that we were not accused of, cheating, we sat in different sections of the room. Now perhaps, I am mistakenly sitting in the wrong seat because I sit right in front of her. And she was probably intimidated by that. But she, graded our papers and it was like, you know, 100 percent then crossed out, and then F. So, you know, at the end, when we got these back like, "What do you mean an F? You scored it at 100," and her response was, '"Black people are incapable of passing my test. I do not know what you did. I do not know how you cheated, but I know you must have cheated."

SM: 19:31
Oh my god. [laughs]

LW: 19:36
Then we went to the department head, who was a gentleman from Kenya, he said, "You know, I agree with you. But there is nothing I can do. Because if, although you seem to have a very valid case, if I do anything it will be just seen, then I am doing something for you because you are black." You know it is like, wait a minute, we are wronged here. We scored legitimately on this test and the teaching of, and we did not even call the teacher racist, although she was. So, you know, all that hard work we ended up with, with F's in the class. So, those two events during our first year of college, I think were perhaps pivotal. But there, of course, were others along the way. I mean, as you-

SM: 20:45
Wow.

LW: 20:46
-grow, you know, you start seeing different things, small things, and large things, it may have a, a real impact on you.

SM: 20:53
I certainly hope that she did not get tenure. [laughs]

LW: 20:56
Oh, she was tenured.

SM: 20:58
Oh, she was?

LW: 20:59
[crosstalk] Professor. Oh, yeah.

SM: 21:01
Oh, my God. Jeez.

LW: 21:03
Yeah.

SM: 21:04
Well, that is, that certainly a watershed event. One of the things here, also is, you refer to it in the very beginning, but why did you choose to become a journalist? What and, and when, and when you did? What are you - I know, I have, I have read your writings many times. What was your first major news coverage that, in your career, the one that really stood out?

LW: 21:27
Okay-okay. Well, the, [chuckles], some of the first coverage I did that has stood out and still stands out as my coverage of move. I was assigned to move shortly after became a full-time reporter in the fall of 1975. And now, oh gosh, 44 years later, I am still covering move. [laughs] Amazing.

SM: 21:52
Reparations, yeah.

LW: 21:53
But how I became a reporter, it was more like the reporter became me versus me become a reporter. I, one of the good things that happened to me in Ohio, I found an interest in photography. And I, started to shooting pictures. And by the time I was in my last, that last semester, Cheyney (University), I said, well, the new medium is television. So, let me go to Temple (University), which had a program for television. And so, I will be on the cutting edge of what is coming next. I had an interest in news, I wanted to be a television news director. But I wanted to be like a field director. So, you know, I wanted to cover wars and jump out of helicopters with cam, you know, camera equipment, and all that sort of thing. As it turned out, after four hundred resumes into television stations all over the country, including in, Minot, North Dakota. And after I sent a resume there and an application, I found out that was one of the coldest places in the United States. So, I am glad they never called me back. But I never got a call back from many stations and the few stations that I did get a call back for, it was just ugly experiences. And a job opened up at the Philadelphia Tribune, I was already freelancing for them. I had a weekly column called "Checking it Out," where I would cover community news events, their regular entertainment people covered the large venues, that at the time the Spectrum or, you know, somebody like Michael Jackson would come in or some of the, the well-known artists, they covered that. I found that opening by covering small events, you know, things in church, basement things and community centers. And so, I was doing that on a freelance basis when that position opened up. I never wanted to be a print reporter that print. Just the thought of being a print reporter really made me sick on my stomach. The only print reporter that I had any inkling of was a guy named Clark Kent. And Clark Kent was a newspaper reporter incidental to his real job, which was superman. So, I did not know-

SM: 23:08
[laughs]

LW: 24:14
-anything about news reporting. About, as a, you know, young father, the wife at the time said you know, "Love, I am supportive of you and you are achieving your dreams. But we need diapers and food for the kids.' And I was like, "Well, you are right." So, I took the job, at the Tribune. I could always write, that was I think, perhaps the only strength that I have is being a writer. As a child, or not a child, yeah, well, child and a teen, I mean, I was not that good in interpersonal interactions. I was very shy. I could not dance. So, you know, I was always the proverbial wallflower, but I could write, and I saw that as, is my strength. And so, having a writing job you know, fit the skills that I had, and after about six months, it was like, "Wow, I really liked this," because it is kind of fi, a lot of things that I wanted to do. I wanted to be in a position to, say effectuate some change. So, by putting out news that could help people, I had always entertained that I, you know, at some point would be a secret agent or, you know, detective or something like that, while being a reporter I was able to investigate things. It gave me an opportunity to travel, initially just around the city. Well, I know Philadelphia well, right? Because I am reporting all over.

SM: 24:14
[laughs] Right.

LW: 24:39
It was not overseas that, that came, you know, years later. So, I found out that I, I really liked it. But it was not something that I set out to do. I remember, when I graduated from high school I worked in this summer program, and because I could write, they assigned me to the Public Relations staff. And one of the persons who were, one of the other high school graduates that was working there. This guy knew that he wanted to be a reporter. And he knew all of his life that he wanted to be a reporter. And he was on his way to some school, somewhere out in the Midwest, to study journalism, and it was always "Wow, how did this guy know, I mean, what is it about this reporting thing?" [laughs] And then years later, he is, I, become, became a reporter myself. And like I say it after a couple of months, it was, I was bitten by the bug, and I am, I am still doing it.

SM: 26:52
Well doing very well. And [crosstalk] and you are teaching future generations about the way to do it, the right way to do it. I-

LW: 27:01
That is, that is what I am hoping.

SM: 27:02
-yeah, as a journalist, going back to that period between (19)60 and (19)75. Could you just, could you, what were your thoughts on the news at that time, the print journalism, the television, news, newspapers, radio, magazine coverage? And the reason I am bringing this up, is because many plate, many people believe that the Watergate hearings, and the, and how the coverage changed the direction of writing. And that is because of what happened with, you know, the reporters, The Washington Post-

LW: 27:38
Woodward and Bernstein.

SM: 27:38
Yeah, Woodward and Bernstein, and Ben Bradley, and I mean, that whole group. Please describe that, in that particular Watergate, the Watergate hearings, and what it really did to journalism.

LW: 27:54
Well, clearly, the Watergate affair had an impact on journalism, primarily from the works of, Woodward and Bernstein, which in effect, brought down the Nixon presidency. I mean, Nixon, in his crimes and malfeasance crumbled his own administration, but the reportage that had, clearly, in effect, reinvigorated interest in investigative journalism. But at the time, that they were doing what they were doing, and I was just pretty much starting my career. My, let me just roll it back a little bit. You were saying, what was my, opinions on journalism in the (19)60s and the (19)70s.

SM: 28:47
Yes.

LW: 28:48
I did not become a journalist until around (19)72, (19)73, when I started writing. And, and at that point, it really was not, well it was journalism, but it was not news journalism, I was doing entertainment and music reviews and movie reviews. My desire at the time, was to either be a jazz writer, a jazz critic, or a movie critic. So, I really did not have that much of, of interest in news. Now in the, late (19)50s, throughout the (19)60s, and then of course, through the rest of my life. My initial contacts with news was from a consumer point of view, an informational point of view. I grew up in a household where reading a newspaper every day and reading these magazines and other things was required, it was not, was not something that you couldn't do. My grandfather, was an avid reader, one of the smartest person I knew, ever, in life. Although he did not go to college, he had to drop out of college to take care of his sisters after his parents died. He was in enrolled in Tuskegee [University], and he had to come out. But he was an avid reader. And, he was in private service, he worked for a rich family. So, when they were finished with their, National Geographics, and other magazines, they would give him to, Luther [laughs] my grandfather's name. And he would read through them, and then he would dog ear certain articles, you know, and then he would bring them to us. And we had to, we had to read them. We always had a subscription to, the local newspapers. And I was in a couple of, college type programs, so we got free subscriptions to Time and Newsweek. So again, I was just an avid reader, consuming. So, it was not from an analytical point of view, it was just, an informational point of view. So as far as I was concerned, at that time, those publications were providing all the news that I needed to know. And at the same time, I was reading, the Pittsburgh's African American newspaper, "The Pittsburgh Courier." And from time to time, I was reading the publication from the "Nation of Islam: Muhammad speaks." So, I was consuming a lot of different kinds of materials. But again, just trying to learn more about the world. And what I felt was the news that was going on in the world, it was not that I was analyzing it, seeing the deficiencies in it, in areas where, who were, could be improved. Posture that I started taking on, after I became a reporter, and started seeing news from a different perspective, and news organizations from a different perspective.

SM: 31:52
Did you, did your grandfather ever sit down at the kitchen table with you and discuss some of those articles?

LW: 31:59
Oh, yeah-yeah we-

SM: 32:01
That is fantastic.

LW: 32:01
-we would discuss it and they were always discussions in, in the house. And the notion of reading and trying to absorb more information was not just from newspapers. I mean, we would, there was this publication that was put out for kids, it was called "The Weekly Reader." It was a little magazine, and my mom had a subscription to it. So, every, you know, at least once a week, perhaps twice a week, my mom would get my brother and sister and I, and sit us down, and we would go through the Weekly Reader, we would read it together, go through the exercises, and there was always one of these. They had a, ongoing series here called "Goofus and Gallant." And of course, Goofus, was the doofus and he was always doing something wrong. Gallant was always the nice guy, and they were little lessons of life. So, we learned that we did not, never wanted to be Goofus. [laughter] Although we might have aspired to be Gallant, you know, and maybe get there every now and then. But we definitely did not want to be Goofus. [laughter] So, I am just saying that there were, varying levels of literacy in, in my household. Both my parents are college graduates. My dad was in law, my mother was in education. So, reading, and being aware of what is going on around you and trying to develop your mental capacities, was something that came from the parents and from the grandparents. My, my mother's father.

SM: 33:40
I want to talk a little bit more, this was a question for later on, but I think I will bring it in here. And that is, that era of Watergate was really when investigative reporting really took a big jump up, upwards. And a lot of people are going into journalism schools wanting to become the next Woodward and Bernstein and you know that for many years, we do not kind of, I have read articles recently that, that is kind of gone by the waste side now that investigative journalism is not what people are going for. I would like your thoughts. I am going to, just a couple of comments here. Investigation as opposed to cover up. This is a question about your world of journalism. When both in the (19)60s and now in (19)73, Watergate investigation and back in the (19)60s and (19)70s, this is my perception. Everything was studied and investigated. Investigative Journalism seemed to be an all-time high, did not take sides. Everyone was, everyone was looked at. It was not a right or left thing. It was not a red or blue thing. It was everyone. And now we are hitting in this period and 2021 where investigative journalists are becoming dinosaurs, in my view, and newspapers, radio, T.V. are now owned by corporate interests. That was not the case, in the (19)60s, when you had a Katharine Graham, a Ben Bradley, a Woodward and Bernstein, they were not beholden to anybody. Corporate influences seem to be major today, not only on T.V., but in, on radio, and newspapers. Just your overall thoughts on journalism, because this is your career, you are teaching the future of journalism for your students. Do you think of these things too?

LW: 35:28
Well, yeah, I definitely think about where journalism is and where it should be. And how can journalism stay, faithful to its role in American society, the founders of this country, from my reading of history, the founders of this country, gave a little carve out to journalism for a very specific reason. Why we have a, freedom of the press clause of one of the five in the First Amendment was because the founders wanted journalists, well, what was what we now know, as journalists, to provide basically two functions. One was to provide information to the public. So, they can make better informed choices, not just about them, their lives, but specifically about how they should engage in democracy and how democracy should work. So, we need information about what is going on in government so people can make more informed choices. Thus, that concept of the quote, "informed electorate," who was supposed to inform the electorate, the press, and back then it was just the printing press. We did not have, you know, internet, cell phones, video cameras with digital data cards. And, then there was another function that the founders wanted for journalism, and that was to bide a check, a watchdog role on government. The American government is three branches, right, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Each of those branches has, quote, checks and balances powers on one or the other. Congress passes the law, the executive, implement the laws, the courts make sure that the implementation and the law itself, is constitutionally, it passes constitutional muster. Now, within that scheme of three branches of government, each with checks and balances powers on each other, the founder said, "Who is going to check the checkers? Whose going to be that entity that makes sure that all of these three branches of government operate in the best interest of the people?" And that is where the press comes in. And that is why we have these freedoms, First Amendment, but we also have that responsibility to provide information and to provide that watchdog role, that constitutional responsibility in terms of its implement implementation, and I would argue it ss embraced, ebbs and flows. I, you laid out how the Watergate investigation worked within Bernstein, reinvigorated investigative reporting, and that there was a lot more independence. back then. I would argue this, that there has always been an interest in investigative reporting. We have got to remember people like, Lincoln Stephens and Ida B. Wells. I mean, think of Ida B. Wells, a woman in a time of just serious machismo. [laughs]

SM: 39:03
Right.

LW: 39:03
And then she is studying and, and reporting on lynching, extra judicial murders committed by mobs. So that, element of investigative reporting has always been there. The fact that, most of your news entities today are owned by corporations, while that has a very dilatory [inaudible] the only thing has changed is that there have, been there are now less owners and operators than there were before. But the, shall we say, the lack of thorough coverage has not changed that much. Whether it was individually owned media, regionally, versus now nationally and internationally owned media. There are certain stories that just do not get out. And, and that was a reflection of the publishers and how those individual publishers, related to the business community in their areas. Let me just give you a couple examples. Philadelphia has a real police community problem and that police community problems stems from police brutality in the city. Police brutality in Philadelphia in 2021, did not start in the year 2000. It literally goes back to the beginnings of the 20th century, the 19, the 1900s. There was a study that was conducted in 1970, about the coverage of the media on police brutality in Philadelphia. And what they found was that the, the news media conscientiously refused to cover police brutality. When in if it was covered, it was covered from the police department's perspective. And whatever the police department said, that was enough. This, bloody bashed black person probably threw themselves down the steps and then ran out and got hit by a bus, and then blamed it on the police. Now, that was 1970. At the time, the SAMSA, we say "The Philadelphia Inquirer," just citing one example, was owned by Walter Annenberg. So, there was a corporate decision by Annenberg to not cover the brutality of the police department.

SM: 39:23
Wow.

LW: 40:33
The paper was subsequently sold to "Knight Ridder," a newspaper chain, Knight Ridder later brought in a new editor, Jean Roberts. Jean Roberts is looking around saying, "Okay, what can we cover? How can we make more of a contribution that would help circulation of newspapers," and they came upon police brutality. They started covering police brutality, won a couple of investigative awards for and their coverage allowed other media in the city, the three, six, ten T.V. stations, "The Bulletin," which was the other newspaper at the time, they finally started giving, more provocative coverage to the issue of police brutality. Now, this is what was happening in the white media. The Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest African American owned newspaper in the country to start a publishing in 1883 had always covered police brutality. But the other newspapers would not. So, to say, you know, from my perspective to say that the news industry was good at one point, now, it is a little better, but not, it just does not track the history of, from what I see what the media has not, has not done.

SM: 43:07
Right.

LW: 43:07
Let us remember, in 1968, the U.S. government issued a, the findings of a presidential commission that examined the urban disturbances of the 1960s. It was called the "Kerner Commission Report." And one of the lines in the kind of commission report that has resonance even today is that America's two countries, you know, separate and distinct, and they are moving further apart. And we have to do something about that. Well, the reality is, it was always two countries, that is, it has been embedded in the law, where black people were not supposed to be a part of this, and neither were Native Americans. But I bring up the Kerner Commission only to say that there is a chapter in the Kerner Commission that deals specifically with the medias, chapter 15. They looked at how the media covered the riots of, of the mid (19)60s. But they also examined the media itself. And one of the things they said, their greatest concern is that the media is failing on it is basic mission to inform. They do not inform their audience, which is why about life in, in black communities. At the time, in 1968 they said to the news media, "It is no longer acceptable to say that you cannot find qualified persons of color to work." There is a whole black media out there that you can gain reporters from. Now when, that was in (19)68, now in 2021, and we still have problems with employment in the media. They have, they have increased some, in (19)68 It was something like 4 percent. Now it is up to about 7 or 8 percent. So yes, in real terms it is double. But, when you have a city of Philadelphia, where over 50 percent of the population are persons of color, and it was an audit just done on "The Enquirer," where their coverage is 60 percent white, what I am saying, you know, who gets into paper in terms of the issues that they focus on the people they quote, his experts, that shows that there is some residual biases, or shall we say endemic biases that still persist in the media.

SM: 44:41
Wow. This, this is wonderful to hear this. And, and I know that the people that will be listening to this interview, as they are all the interviews, will use his research and scholarship in whatever career they are going into. I mean, this is very, this is very important information. I have learned something today just from, just these last 10 minutes. And it is very important. Thank you very much for elaborating, as you have done, I have a list of some things here from the (19)60s and early (19)70s. That I, I know that the media covered them, sometimes they probably over cover them as time goes on. But just, just a few, just brief comments. I got about twenty-two of them here. I, there is many more, but these are events.

LW: 46:02
Okay. [chuckles]

SM: 46:03
The number one is the election of JFK in (19)60. Just your thoughts on that?

LW: 46:11
Well, when JFK was elected in 1960, I was 10 years old. So to me, the world was, tomato soup and- grilled cheese sandwiches-

SM: 46:25
[laughs] Yep.

LW: 46:26
-for lunch. [laughs]

SM: 46:28
Mac and cheese. [laughs]

LW: 46:30
I walked home from school, ate lunch, and then walked back to school.

SM: 46:33
Wow, okay.

LW: 46:35
I have to admit and, and even to this day, I still kind of cringe on this. But the day that the, there was this funeral, the, the formal funeral, after Kennedy was assassinated. We had the day off from school. Some people, like our parents were glued to the television set watching this funeral of an American president. But for me and my friends, it was a day off from school. So, we were out in the street playing football, you know, tag football. So, a lot of these national events, these really pivotal events in American history as a child and a team. That was something that affected grown folks. Yes, the President was shot. I guess that is kind of bad. But gosh, we got a day off from this.

SM: 47:32
Right. Yes.

LW: 47:35
That is, that was my thinking on both the election and the funeral of Kennedy.

SM: 47:40
So, these early, these events like certainly the Cuban Missile Crisis in (19)62. That was unbelievable on T.V. And then as you get into the mid (19)60s, the March on Washington in 1963, Brown versus Board of Education, and certainly the Voting Rights Act of (19)65, and (19)64. And these are, these are things that I remember, and maybe it is just me, but they were monumental in my life, because I was, I was a little older than you. And then of course, the Beatles come to America in (19)64, beginning of the British invasion.

LW: 48:16
I remember that, yeah. It is all. [inaudible]

SM: 48:18
Yep, the [inaudible].

LW: 48:20
I remember watching the Beatles walk off the, walk off the airplane and young ladies were just fainting at the airport. And I am just sitting there at the T.V. looking at this stuff, and wow, this is really crazy.

SM: 48:31
[laughs]

LW: 48:32
Beatles made some nice music. But this, is kind of like the, the glamour of, of the time- -of the time period. Remember the, the great civil rights work and a lot of the, as you say, the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. I mean, I read about those and knew what was going on. I could relate to some of that because, say, I told you my father was a lawyer, but he was also a politician. And the neighborhood that I grew up in Homewood when we moved to Homewood. Lastly, my parents always lived in Homewood. But, as we move from an apartment to an apartment to the finally the home that they purchased, the neighborhood was primarily white. And at the time, Pittsburgh was doing urban renewal in the area right off downtown. And there was a phrase called, "Urban Renewal means Negro removal." So, they were going into these black neighborhoods, tearing everything down, to build new office buildings, or in, Pittsburgh's case what they call the Civic Arena, which was a venue for concerts and sporting events. But they go there right in the black neighborhood, but the black neighborhood was right next to downtown [inaudible] district. So, a lot of those people were moving out into Homewood and my father was part of an effort to secure the ward championship in Homewood to persons of color. And so, I am saying this to say that the group that he led, and he ultimately did become the board leader. But the group that he led, which was an interracial group, need to emphasize that they held meetings two or three times a week in my living room, Portland, the living room, or my parents’ house.

SM: 48:39
Right.

LW: 48:39
I was not paying any the bills, so. [laughter] [crosstalk] But they met every night. I mean, there is like 30-40 people crammed into the living room and the dining room. And I am sitting on the steps. And I am not really realizing all that is going on here. And I am listening to this and listen to that. And I am listening pretty much I am a little perturbed because I wanted to go into the kitchen and get a bowl of cereal and some snacks. Before I went to bed, and I could not come down the steps. It was always adults there. [laughter] When I am, I am looking at change, but not really realizing the enormity of what I am looking at. And the years later, I stumbled upon clippings that my mother kept. And I saw the, their struggles that they went through, people were fired from their jobs, it was physical intimidation, it took them like two or three years to actually effectuate change. So, and I was oblivious to the change that was going on, I mean, I saw it in you know, different ways and different places. But again, being a child and then a teen. My interests were not in the macro fans, who were in, in the microphones in front of me, where we want to go swimming tonight, and this was at a time. Now I told you I grew up in Pittsburgh. So, we are not talking about Pittsburgh. There is a Pittsburgh, Alabama, and Mississippi. And there is a Pittsburgh, California. So, I am not talking about down south. I am talking about-

SM: 48:39
Right-right.

LW: 50:41
-Pennsylvania, I had to walk almost three miles to go to a public pool because the public pool in our neighborhood, which was about eight blocks away. Negroes were not allowed in. In 1969, I ended up being a lifeguard there. And I was the first or second black lifeguard had ever been at that pool.

SM: 52:32
My god.

LW: 52:33
So, there was discrimination all around. When I would go to my father's, mother's house on the other side of the city, they lived up on Mount Washington in an area called Bell's Hoover, there was a high school literally in the, in the junior high school, literally a half a block away from the back door of my grandmother's house. But we could not go there to go swimming because of the racial situation. So, we had to walk again two miles to a public pool that allowed negros in, but we had to walk through various white neighborhoods. So, we were always there, you know, looking around to see if we were going to get beat up, walking through these neighborhoods. So again, I understood these things. But, again, I did not grasp the enormity of it, until I got older and was able to look back and see some of these things. And then, also started looking at the things around me at the time, with the perception of an older person that had a little more understanding about the dynamics that were going on in the country.

SM: 53:37
Linn was that also, was when you became a lifeguard at that, basically segregated pool. Was that one of those watershed moments in your life? You really, you were, you were an older person now as a teenager, so.

LW: 53:51
Right, yeah. I guess in some ways, it was a watershed moment, but not. It was just one of those things that happen. I was more interested in the fact that I landed a summer job that paid good money. [laughter]

SM: 54:05
Right.

LW: 54:07
Versus me to see myself as someone who helped desegregate the place.

SM: 54:11
Right.

LW: 54:12
Now, I had a nice job. I made good money. I was not, you know, lifting garbage cans or you know, painting walls like-

SM: 54:19
Right.

LW: 54:19
-some of the summer jobs where I could chill out in the swimming pool. And it was an easy way to collect money. [laughs]

SM: 54:26
Let me just, [crosstalk] let me just read a few more of these, I will just read them and you can just comment in at the very end if you want to. These are ones that certainly the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of (19)64, the formation of the American Indian Movement in (19)68. Certainly, the Black Panthers with Cleaver, Newton, and Brown. The Montgomery boycott was actually much earlier, the formation of snick. You know, and I was young enough to know the conversion from John Lewis to Stokely Carmichael. And, what happened at Selma. Certainly, the Chicago convention and 1968 after King's murder, Bobby Kennedy's murder, the Chicago 8 trial, the landing on the moon in (19)68, Stonewall in (19)69, the Kent State killings in (19)70, McGovern is defeated by Nixon in (19)72, in a landslide. And then, Goldwater was defeated in (19)64 by L.B.J. And Agnew, continues to attack students in all of his speeches, Nixon silent majority, the Vietnam War from (19)67 to (19)71. The coup in (19)62, when Kennedy was president, while standing at the schoolhouse door, which I remember, like anything, the women's movement, and the protests of Miss America contest, the Watergate hearings, these are just some of the things that were the (19)60s and early (19)70s. And, of course, we ended up getting disco in the middle of the, (19)70s.

LW: 54:57
[laughs]

SM: 55:35
And, and the great music of you know, Barry White and Isaac Hayes. And I mean-

LW: 55:45
Oh yeah-yeah.

SM: 55:45
-this whole is, you know, it is like you, like you mentioned, Linn, it was an unbelievable time to live in.

LW: 56:01
Yeah.

SM: 56:02
Sad, a lot of sadness. But, you know, I do not know if you want to comment on any of those that were had.

LW: 56:10
Well, sure. The Vietnam War was definitely a big part of all of our lives. And we saw it, played out live on television, but saw it in some other ways too, the, you know, in the initial phases of the Vietnam War, not the initial phases, because the Vietnam War, actually, the Vietnam War actually started in the late (19)50s, when Americans were sent in after the French would run out, and Americans were sent in as advisors- -initially. And then they started bringing in, Special Forces, but at the time the Special Forces were more paratroopers than Green Berets. And then when we get to around the mid (19)60s, things are starting to ramp up. And with that ramping up of, drawing people into the war, there was this draft. And, I remember sitting in high school, we would go home on Fridays, we come back on a Monday, and there would be missing seats in the classroom. When I say missing seats, I mean a person is missing from those seats, because everybody was assigned a seat. While the draft people were coming to people's homes on the weekend, grabbing them and taking them and sticking them in the war. And many of the people who were grabbed on one weekend. You know, this was in the fall, the spring semester, when we come back, they would be back in school, sometimes missing fingers sometimes missing other body parts, they have gone to war get blown up-

SM: 56:40
Right.

LW: 57:36
and were sent right back home. So, the war was not something that was remote for me. Now, I guess you, the way you talk about watershed events and things changing. My evolution as a person was in the early (19)60s. I wanted to, my aspiration after high school was to go to West Point, become a paratrooper, and go over to Vietnam and kill Vietnamese. But the events, the civil rights protests, the business with, Muhammad Ali Lee, and just doing more and more reading, I became less and less enamored with that war. And my interest in, going to West Point and becoming a paratrooper just evaporated. When I graduated from high school, I had an opportunity to go to Annapolis, they wanted me to come down there and run track. But at that point, I was, you know, anti-war, anti-military. And I, wanted to direct my energies to changing [chuckles] or contributing to change versus being a part of supporting a status quo that I, I really did not like. So, yeah, the Vietnam War was definitely, definitely a big part of it. I remember the change when Stokely took over the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I remember the rise of each wraparound, those were my heroes, King was not. I saw King at the time as, too conciliatory, to turn the other cheek. Really saw him, and I hate to say that now, because I have studied King a lot more and realized, you know, all of the contributions that he made, and the courage that it took to do what he did back then, it was at, well, he is not Malcolm X, you know. He wants to be too conciliatory; he was not a Black Panther. He was criticizing of the Black Panthers when they were just trying to stand up. And, you know, black berets and leather coats looked a lot cooler than, [laughs] a straw-hat walking down a road in Alabama getting beat by the, Alabama State Police.

SM: 57:36
Wow. Right.

LW: 1:00:02
Now, you know, I know a lot more about him and call it if. So, those events that you raised, or things that I was aware of, and a lot of my friends were aware of. And we were talking about him, and it is not like, you know, they were things just happen out there. And we are worried about, you know, what is the latest record coming from Motown? And can we afford to buy it at our friend's father's record store? But so, we were definitely aware of them. There were discussions in classes. We, I was in the upper bound programs, we were on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, take, I mean not the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, Pitt, taking classes they were, you know, discussed there. But a lot of that stuff was, well, that is way over there. In terms of the Vietnam War, although many of our colleagues and close friends were in the war.

SM: 1:00:53
Yeah, everybody knows the history of Philadelphia with respect, I think it is Thomas Edison High School, the largest number of students that died in the Vietnam War-

LW: 1:01:03
Right-right.

SM: 1:01:03
-came from Thomas Edison High School. And I interviewed the former principal, and he told, his brother was one of those that was killed. What is really sad is the stories of a lot of those men that I think The Philadelphia Inquirer, I think, they did an unbelievable reportage, when the, the Vietnam memorial was built at Penn's Landing. You probably remember this, Linn, that newspaper, every single person who served, who died, they were all there, anybody was on that wall from Philly was on there, it was, I have five of them, I have given them to Binghamton University because it is such a historic thing. But the reasons why they went into that war, were as diverse as, you know, the people of America. Wanted to get, if somebody, one thought of these, you know, they could not get a job. They can do well, in the military, they can see the world, you know, the whole story there. And while it is Terry, while it is Terry, if he was alive, I certainly would have interviewed because one of his books, was a book on Bloods.

LW: 1:02:07
Yeah, I read that book.

SM: 1:02:09
It is in a Wallace and what he did, by risking his life, to be next to the soldiers who were African American, Vietnam is amazing story, as you well know. When you look at the, when you look at the battles fought in the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, over segregation, racism, sexism, equality, justice, peace, human rights, environmental concerns, homophobia, where did we fail? And where did we succeed, heavy? You know, I say this, because, you know, my advisor at Ohio State was Dr. Roosevelt Johnson, if you want to listen to him, I interviewed him. And he is one of my interviews, he was the man outside of my parents who had the greatest influence on my life. He was an African American PhD at the age of twenty-nine, at Ohio State University.

LW: 1:03:03
Oh, my goodness.

SM: 1:03:04
And, when I was scheduled to start in the fall of 19- (19)70, it was (19)71. And I ended up going there, I broke my arm. And I ended up getting, going a semester later, and I bite because of that, I had the chance to have Dr. Johnson as my advisor. I can tell you, we sat in the office talking about the issue of between African Americans and white Americans, for hours and hours and hours, our program was geared toward that. It was to, geared toward encounter trying to understand, trying to listen to what other people felt not knowing that we are not in their shoes. But, to at least listen. And I, asked this question kind of in honor of Dr. Johnson, because Dr. Johnson's, we always said, you know, you know, "Do, do your part, play your role in making this a better world for everyone. And speak up when you have to," even if there is a risk in speaking up, if you see injustice, and he passed away in 2015, and now I cannot talk to him about how he would feel about where we are in 2021. I think he would be disappointed. Your thoughts on-on all of these things here. Why are we taking one step forward and two step backwards in 2020 and 2021? That is what I am feeling it. And I do not know, if I am the only one.

LW: 1:04:29
Well, the one step forward and two step backwards is not something unique to our time period. In the, now 21st century. It has always been, the modus operandi of America. And that is something that because we do not, because we do not do enough to really learn the true history, as, what was it, George Santiago's said, " Those who do not learn from history essentially are doomed to repeat it." The March on Washington that everybody lodged in applause. Now, Dr. King says during oratory, "I have a dream." While those who are yelling, we need to focus on the "I Have a Dream," you know, particularly now those who are against critical race theory, like that is taught in elementary schools or the sixteen nineteen project, They, they are either willfully ignorant, or willfully deceptive of the fact that before Dr. King articulated his dream, he delineated a nightmare in America. He talked about voter suppression. He talked about income inequality. He talked about housing deprivation, he talked about health care, and he talked about police brutality. In fact, he criticized police brutality, twice in that speech. And what is forgotten about that event in August of 1963, is that the person who put that protest march together that program, a Philip Randolph, a black labor leader, had actually set that protest to take place during 1943. Over the same issues, but the President of the United States at the time, intervened and asked him to hold off, because the country was at war against Japanese imperialism, and German fascism. And he did not want, to have a dismissiveness in America. But those issues, were still there. So, when we talk about the civil rights movement, the civil rights movement was the civil rights movement of the (19)60s. It was not the only one. So, the, the one step forward, two steps back that you referenced, and rightfully, we can see that happening. After the Civil War, what happened after the Civil War, there was supposedly this, period of reconstruction. And, let me just give you one example. I do not want to get too deep into history. But, after the Civil War, the Congress under the leadership of a, Pennsylvania Congressman, I think was Thaddeus Stevens, Congress passed a law that said that all former slaves were entitled to one hundred acres of land. And if they pay nominal rent on this land for five years, they would have ownership of that land. Okay. It, it was not, I am sorry, it was not one hundred acres, it was 40 acres. It was not forty acres and a mule. The 40 acres and a mule was a field order that a Union General gave for a small section of Georgia, this law would have given ex-slaves 40 acres, at nominal rent, it was not giving them anything, at nominal rent. The, then President, the person who succeeded Lincoln after he was assassinated, Andrew Johnson wrote a very venomous veto of this bill, saying, in essence, not in essence, but saying in fact that it would be unfair to white people to give this opportunity to former slaves to be able to rent land. Now, the duplicity there is that years, about three years before that, Congress passed what was called the Homestead Act, which gave persons one hundred acres of land for free, out west, but Blacks were barred from doing it. So, here we have the president of the United States saying that Black people cannot even have the opportunity to rent land for five years to get it. At the same time, that any white person in America or any white immigrant who came in America had an opportunity to get one hundred acres of free land. And so, we see these disparities from time and time and time again. In 1799, a group of black Philadelphians sent a petition to Congress, and at the time Congress was meeting in Philadelphia, right in Independence Hall, George Washington was living one block away in a rented mansion as president, at 16 Market Street. And that, petition said or requested two things. One, that there will be a gradual abolition of slavery, not an immediate end to it, a gradual abolition of slavery. And the person said that, you know, implement this gradual abolition of slavery and we, the Black community would take the lead in doing what was needed to do to help our brothers make the transition from slave to free. But they also asked for something else. They asked for protection under federal law to prevent the kidnapping of free Blacks and sending them back to slavery. You remember the, you remember the movie that won an Academy Award in 2013, "Twelve Years a Slave." "Twelve Years A Slave" was based on a book that was written for a guy named Solomon Northrup, who was a free black concert pianist who was kidnapped and held in slavery for 12 years. That happened in the, his book came out in the 1850s. So, if Congress had responded to this tax paying, free black citizens of the United States, in 1799, the likelihood of Solomon Northrup being, literally kidnapped would have been lessened severely. And thus, you know, we would have had a movie on, Solomon Northrop in the 2000s. Now, that petition was debated a little bit by Congress. And Congress ultimately said, "Well, look, we have no power to change slavery because it is the law." Okay, so this critical race theory alone is saying, well, there is nothing about racism and a law, racism is embedded at the very soul of the law in America. One congressman wins that debate. And if you go into the Congressional Record, I got a copy. You see where there was a congressman from South Carolina, I think his name was Whelan. He got up and said, you know, these people are asking us to do something that the law forbids us from doing, we cannot do anything about slavery because it is in the Constitution. And furthermore, furthermore, we should table this petition, because it was not written by black people because everybody knows that negros cannot write. Now, this petition was put together primarily by two people. One a guy named Richard Allen, the founder of the AME Church in Philadelphia that became a denomination around the world. And another minister named Absalom Jones, who founded perhaps the first black church, St. Thomas Episcopal Church. Now the irony here, Steve, is that Absalom Jones was the primary author of the 1799 petition. Absalom Jones had authored a petition that was sent to Congress in 1797, on behalf of some free blacks who were run out of North Carolina, and the petition is so, and it talks about the experience of these people who were chased out of the state, chased off the land they would own, by giant massive dogs that were unleashed by our fellow citizens on us. And Congress refused to deal with that event, in fact, James Madison, the father of the 1st and 15th of the Bill of Rights, got up and said that the petitioners have no right to come before Congress, they need to take it before the state government. And we are sure that the state government will look favorably upon their petition when they were run out of state and the state government did not do anything for them. And that would have been 1797, in four years, well, three years before that, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen wrote a pamphlet to rebut racist accounts of what black people did in the 1793, yellow fever epidemic, where they served as nurses to the persons who were sick and bury the dead. That critique that they wrote was the first criticism of racism in the media that took place in the United States. They wrote it. Yet in 1799, you had a congressman from South Carolina, who said that we should not consider the petition that was filed in 1799 because black people couldn't write. And you remember, during President Obama's first term, I think it was his first or second State of the Union address. One congressman got up and said, "You lie," and walked and stormed out of the, The Chamber. He was a congressman from South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. So here, 1799 ignorance from somebody from South Carolina, and then in 2000 something ignorance from somebody from South Carolina. So, there is a circularity to this ignorance that breeds racism but a racism that breeds ignorance. And that is what America is. So, when we talk about one step forward, and two steps back, that has been the American dance since it is very inception.

SM: 1:10:39
Yes.

LW: 1:10:40
Yeah, you know, Linn, again, a beautiful description of all these years here. It is, something is happening in America today. We knew that in the, in the (19)60s and (19)70s, you know, it was a rough time, in many areas and movements and everything. But there is something about right now. I mean, not, I do not even have to talk about the pandemic. I am talking about right now in America, in the last I can, I do not even know what it is, 10 years. And of course, many people can say, well, it. The reason is, though, you see a part of the American now that elected Donald Trump. You know, it is about well, we want to go back to the way it was. And when I hear that, I said, "What are you talking about the way it was?" And I do not know, I talked with my peers. There is a lot of confusion here. And it is, a very disturbing time we are living in. Yes, it is.

SM: 1:15:51
And I do not know, I cannot believe that after all we have been through in our history. And from all ethnic backgrounds that we have not got, have not gotten farther than we are, even though we have gone quite a way. How anyone, how anyone can ever feel that they are better than someone else has disturbed me from the day I was 10 years old. And, and, and I sense that there is so many Americans who feel that they are better. Whether it be because of their skin color, their religion, their politics, you know, sexual orientation, gender, I mean, this, it is disturbing.

LW: 1:17:21
It is, but it is one of these things that America, and Americans have not learned from American history. And that is in large part because history is not taught properly. There is an African proverb that says that "Until lions, have historians, the hunters will always be heroes." And this, there has been a fight, a resistance to learning the true history of America, the black history of America, the Native American history, one of the, more intriguing things that museums that I have ever been in, and I have been in museums all around the world, when I travel always wanted to go to museums and learn about, you know, their respective countries. So, the British Museum, the Louvre, you know, museums in Venice, the apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. But I went to the, there was a Cherokee, up in the Cherokee reservation right outside of Asheville, North Carolina, and went through their museum and saw the, just devastation that was wrought against them and went through the Native American museum down in Washington, D.C. And so, you get the real sense of what is going on. But what I am trying to say, in terms of not knowing history, in the 1890s, there was a severe recession in the country. And something happened during that recession. And particularly in the south, it was poor whites and poor Black farmers, and just workers started looking at each other and say, "Wait a minute, you are Black, I am white, but we are, we have something in common. We are both dirt poor." And who is keeping us dirt poor? It is not rich blacks, because there is none of them, it is these industrialists and these cooperatives and these elite. So, they started coming together and forming political movements. And there was a crack back, that was unbelievable. And that is when you start having these, Jim Crow laws started, you know, ramping up, and I saw where somebody gave a famous writer, gave a description saying that Jim Crow instilled in the heart of a poor white man that he was better In the black man because he did not have to sit on the same toilet, despite the fact that the are both still poor. And he started getting this separate but equal legislation.

SM: 1:20:11
Right.

LW: 1:20:11
So where, where did separate but equal really become a shrine in the, in the U.S.? It started in Louisiana, a guy challenged, being discriminated against on streetcars. The governor of the state at the time, was elected in terms of because he promised to help desegregate facilities. He later became a member of the Louisiana Supreme Court. And he upheld the separate but equal law. And then, that went up to the United States. And that was the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling. The ruling said, yes, the 14th amendment and the 15th Amendment said that they were supposed to be equality under the law. But, in the scheme of things that was never intended. It was never intended to give Black people social equality and just, just possibly political equality. And then they had the nerve to say that if, if anybody feels that this rule, essentially everybody feels this ruling is racist, then that is their misinterpretation of it. What the heck do you mean that you are now creating a caste system baked into the law? And then you are saying that it is not racist. But let us remember, roll it back to, when was it, 1857, when the Supreme Court did the Dred Scott ruling. And in that ruling, there was this declaration that the Black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect. And in that ruling, the judge who did it, a guy named Tony, wrote that we, essentially, we Americans are not being racist, because what we are just now solidifying in law was something from Britain, that there was the Brits. You know, essentially, the Brits are the most racist people on Earth. We are just following what they are doing. So do not blame us. Blame the Brits. this is in the ruling. So, there has always been this notion in America that no, we are not racist. We will not accept any responsibility, or accountability for our racism. And we will blame it on everybody else. So now, you have this attack, these attacks on critical race theory. And they are saying that, you know, we want to make sure that nobody thinks that they are better than anybody else. And why do not you follow the dictates of Martin Luther King, to be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin, but again forgetting the nightmare that, that came delineated. Let us look at North Carolina, North Carolina in 2021, one of the most preeminent and award-winning journalists of this era, Hannah Nicole Jones, gets an appointment at the University of North Carolina's Chapel Hill, their journalism program, one of the preeminent programs in the country. She is a graduate of that program. However, because she authored the sixteen nineteen projects for the New York Times that won a Pulitzer Prize. She was denied tenure. Now, every person that had taken that position that she was assigned, had received tenure upon hire. But the trustees said that cause since she is going into an academic position, we are not sure of her academic credentials, and-and they held this thing on for almost a year. It took public pressure for them to finally grant her tenure. But at that point, she was so frustrated and exasperated, she decided to go to Howard University. And in the meantime, she was able to raise $25 million. So she went to Howard, with a $25 million contribution to create a whole new center there. Now why I bring up her example is just to show you a clear in black and white example of contemporary racism. But there is a historical, there is some historical roots for this. The only successful insurrection in the United States where a government was overthrown and no one came in to do anything about it took place in Wilmington, North Carolina in November of 1898. A former congressman who was a Confederate Army Colonel led a white mob, and they overthrew the city government of Wilmington. And that government, there was I think, ten members of city council, of whom two were black, and in The White Declaration of Independence that the insurrection is issued. Yes, it was literally called, " The White Declaration of Independence." It said that they were no, they would never ever be governed by Black people, that Black people could not work that Black people couldn't live in the city. They could not do this. They could not do that. I mean, it was clearly white supremacy in racism. But what I am bringing this up to show one of the many examples is that when they started their coup d'etat, and they were on their way to march to City Hall to run the people out of City Hall, the first target of the racist insurrectionists, was the Black newspaper in that town. They burned the building to the ground. And they ran the editor out of town, he ended up coming to Philadelphia. And as it turns out, he ended up founding one of the first, one of the larger civil rights groups in the city. But why did they attack this guy's newspaper and burn it down? And by the way, that was the only black owned daily newspaper in the entirety of the United States, at that time, 1898. Well, this, publisher, editor had editorialized against lynching. Newspapers and politicians, and everybody down in North Carolina, and all across the South were very much in favor of lynching. He said it was wrong. And because of that, he initiated the hire of these races, and they burned the place down. The governor of North Carolina at the time, and the U.S. president refused to send the National Guard and to, unequal the rebellion. And because they did not do that, those who are part of that racist mob, became the leaders of Wilmington. That is the only successful insurrection in U.S. history. So, we have the journalists in 2021, being singled out because of racism. And we have a journalist in 1898, being singled out because of racism, and is both in North Carolina. And that is just one example. And then I could give you an example, example, example, example. All across the country of this, you know, time and time again. Of the very inception of this country.

SM: 1:27:26
I think, I think that- I think Dr. Harry Edwards was, had some issues when he was at Berkeley.

LW: 1:27:34
Oh yeah, definitely.

SM: 1:27:36
Because he had been, he had been writing some of the, [inaudible] Black students. He wrote some great, great books. He was, massive numbers of articles and magazines, and he was not getting tenure. I mean, come on. And so [crosstalk] go ahead.

LW: 1:27:53
When I went up for Temple, when I went up for tenure, the president of the university tried to, to stop it. The president of Temple University tried to stop it. "You are just a journalist," this is what he sneered at me one day. "You are just a journalist."

SM: 1:28:09
Which president was that?

LW: 1:28:12
A guy named Adam Manny.

SM: 1:28:13
Okay, yeah. Okay. Very good.

LW: 1:28:15
Yeah-yeah. And what they were, what they say it is, you know, "Yes, you. Yes. In the six years that you have been here you published five thousand newspaper articles, 5000 newspaper articles, in addition to teaching, but you have not been published in a scholarly journal," while I was under the practice track, not the scholarly track. And they said, "Well, you were supposed to be under the scholarly track," I said, "No, I was not. This is what they told me to do. And I did that." And so, they said, "Well, there was a letter that was sent from your department chair, to the then dean, that said that you could either be a scholar or a practitioner." Two things: number one, I never saw that letter. Never ever saw it. It was not even sent to me or supposed to be sent to me. And number two, the letter that they are citing the saying that I am not entitled to tenure, because I did not do the scholarly track. Say that Professor Washington could do scholar or practice. So, when I found out about that, I dusted off my old year law school civil procedure books and had to give them a lesson on the meaning of either in or, and, and because of that, they backed up and backed off.

SM: 1:29:49
Right.

LW: 1:29:50
Yeah. I, my last year at the Philadelphia Daily News from (19)88 to (19)89. I left there in (19)89 and went to work for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. But I had a fellowship at the Yale Law School, they have a journalism fellowship program every year, they bring journalists in to give them a better understanding of the law. And I went to Yale Law School. So, I knew a little bit about the law. And also, when I came back to the Daily News, I was unqualified for promotion, despite having a master's degree from the Yale law school. And I left there, left the paper, and then went to work for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. For three years, I was a special assistant. And then by the time I get to Temple, you know, somehow, I am just a journalist. [laughs]

SM: 1:30:36
Wow, you, I know you are, I know [crosstalk]

LW: 1:30:41
Yeah, I am sorry, go ahead.

SM: 1:30:42
I know, you are much more than-than that having seen you in two programs at my former place of employment- you are you are indeed a scholar. And, and, and a great person that influences young people in a very positive way. And let me, just two final questions here. I, we had already you had already talked about the watershed moment of being in the 1968 Olympics. It is interesting that one of my latter questions was going to be activism and sports. I bring this up, because we brought Tommy Smith to our campus. So, I got a chance to know Tommy when he was at our school before I left, but when you think of Tommy Smith, and John Carlos, and the other athletes from that time you think of black power, and you think of the, that term empowerment but, but we have also heard from today's certainly with Kaepernick, and Harry Edwards has been a big writer on this, as well as a supporter for Kaepernick that, you know, when Kaepernick sat down at that football game, he did not say anything, he just sat down, he was making a statement toward police brutality, killings of black men, around America. That was his comment. He was not making any other comments. And I am amazed at how the media stared interpreting it from every direction. And that was not why he did it. But then it got into this big controversy that you know; athletes should never speak up. Athletes should be quiet, you know, shut up, you know, just like entertainers, entertainers, and athletes. You are not, you know, just be quiet. So your thoughts on what is going on, you know, between (19)68, and today, not only with the Kaepernick issue, but also the fact when people are talking about the protests of today, Black Lives Matter, all these new groups that they say, "We are the reincarnation of the (19)60s." Do you like when you hear that?

LW: 1:30:48
[laughs] Clear limits, let me just say this. Professor Harry Edwards was a part of the Olympic boycott movement. And it succeeded. He was one of the organizers in the intellectual, you know, spark plug for that in the months leading up to that, you know, he was holding meetings and conferences and negotiations, you know, trying to get all the athletes on board with it. So, he was a part of that. Let me jump forward to Colin Kaepernick, because [laughs] I wrote a chapter that is now in a book that came out last fall on critical race theory. Now, I am not a critical race theorist, and I am not a scholar, all right. Let me be clear on that. But one of the things that I brought out is how the media covered Kaepernick. Kaepernick was on the, the sideline, taking a knee, the first person that went to interview, Kaepernick was the first Black reporter that NFL, NFL Network had ever hired. He knew Kaepernick, you know, from covering, and he just went over, despite all the other reporters being there, and he went over, "Why you got on why are you on your knees?" Nobody even thought to go over talk to the guy. And he said, you know, Kaepernick said that he was making a, his own protest against police brutality and abusive policing. Now, what is more humbling than to take a knee? Did he stand up during the national anthem and put his hand in the air, not even with a Black power first, but with the middle finger? No, he took a knee. The coverage of that, as you rightfully said, just was way over the top, a mile wide but an inch thick because it provided no context. When they referenced Kaepernick talking about police brutality, they said he is complaining about the shooting in Ferguson or Michael Brown and the choking death of Eric Gardener in Staten Island, New York City. Of all of the thousands of articles in minutes, to hours of news coverage, no one, no one contextualized police brutality within San Francisco. August of 2016 is when Kaepernick did his thing in, April that year, the mayor of the city fired the police commissioner for the police commissioner's failure to address police brutality. That morning of the press conference where the mayor fired the police commissioner, the police shot and killed an unarmed woman in one of the Black communities. About a month and a half after that, the results from an investigation that was conducted by three judges in California, including a former member of California Supreme Court, they were looking at the issue of racist text messages and Facebook postings by members of the San Francisco Police. So, we have two major findings of substantive issues involving brutality in San Francisco, and no one connected any of that to Kaepernick. A month after, yeah, a month after Kaepernick took his knee, the U.S. Department of Justice issued their pattern and practice investigation into San Francisco police and condemned brutality in San Francisco, that was not connected. San Francisco is located across the bay from a town called Oakland, California. What happened in Oakland, California in 1966, an organization called the Black Panther Party for self-defense was formed to counter the police brutality in Oakland at that time. And the Black newspaper, or one of the black newspapers in San Francisco, who wrote an editorial in 1969, condemning police brutality. And they said that this had been a problem in San Francisco, going back 25 years. So that would have put it back in the late (19)40s. So, we have this decades long history of documented police brutality in San Francisco, and none, none of the news coverage of Kaepernick put that in there, not even a sentence, not even have an oblique reference to it. And, you know, just so we could, perhaps short circuit the, well, that is Colin Kaepernick and none of that would ever happen to him because he is a star, please. The report that the judges put out, had an examination of an incident that happened to San Francisco to a guy named Alexander Natto. He was Latino guy, law abiding, working, never doing anything wrong, walking to, walking through a park on his way to work. He worked as a security guard, he has a taser. He is eating a burrito, walking through a park on his way to work. Somebody in that gentrified neighborhood walking their dog sees a colored person, who he thinks has a gun and is menacing people, eating a burrito, because the police. The police arrived, and fifteen shots later, with the majority of the shots in the guy's back after he is on the ground. He is dead. But why do I bring this up in relation to Colin Kaepernick? Because Natto at the time, was wearing a brand-new NFL, store purchased, San Francisco forty-niners’ jacket and hat. So, he was shot in San Francisco, forty-niners gear. So, Kaepernick could have had the same fears that the officers, you know, an encounter with an officer he could have gotten killed. But again, contextually none of that was included in news coverage. And the Society of Professional Journalists ethics code urges journalists to always include context in their coverage. And this was something that would be, the Kerner Commission also emphasized in his 1968 report. Yet, in 2016, not a single reporter in the country sought to contextualize what is happening. What should I say, not a single reporter or coverage in mainstream media, because athletic media and alternative media did bring this up, but not the mainstream media.

SM: 1:39:58
Yeah, it is, it is a great analysis between (19)68 and 2020. Nothing is really changed. Nothing is really changed. And I think I am going to conclude the interview with you just to bring back about what you are doing today in your work as a professor of journalism at Temple. I know I saw your bio, and you are involved in a lot of different things there. Could you kind of just briefly describe the kinds of courses you are teaching, the kind of impact you think you are having on the future journalists of tomorrow, and, and then any projects you might be doing in the community?

LW: 1:40:41
Okay. Well, currently, I am teaching in the Journalism Department at Temple University, I always teach a writing course, I was a co-founder of their award-winning hyperlocal news site called "Philadelphianeighborhoods.com." It is a multimedia community-based reporting program. So, I do, teaching of basic reporting skills, and multimedia skills at the undergraduate level and the graduate level, I am primarily now teaching in the graduate program. I do a lot of what is called study aways. I have taken students to London three times, and the South Africa three times. The South Africa program has been the only study abroad program at Temple University that has ever won any awards. We have won awards every year that we have gone over there, including international awards. From the coverage of the students, we take them into the townships, we literally take them from the corporate suites at the top of buildings to, to caves and mines. So, they see a diversity there. That is what I do in terms of Temple University. Right now, I am involved in two book projects. One is looking at the 1985 moon bombing but looking at it primarily from the perspective of journalists of color who covered that event. And then, I am also involved in a book project related to Dr. Martin Luther King and his first protest that took place not in Montgomery, Alabama, but Maple Shade, New Jersey-

SM: 1:42:13
Wow.

LW: 1:42:13
-where he had a sit-in at a restaurant on June 12, 1950. This was Dr. King's first demonstration, his first sit-in against racism that led to his first lawsuit against racism. However, the Office of Historic Preservation in New Jersey, those who designate what should be historically recognized and what should not have determined that King's first protest, and his first lawsuit, and his first lawsuit was filed by the NAACP in New Jersey. And the person who was the president of the NAACP was the person who had lobbied for the passage of a civil rights law in New Jersey, a statewide, desegregation law, the first in the nation. Those are the people who helped Dr. King, yet the historic office in New Jersey says that it has a minimal historic importance. So, I am writing a book about this blue state bigotry, where these people can claim that Dr. Martin Luther King's first protest, and where he planned that protests in Camden, has no historic import

SM: 1:42:14
Oh my god.

LW: 1:42:18
These are the same, these are the same people who gave a historic designation to the house of the brother of the famous poet Walt Whitman, now Walt Whitman lived for a month in, in Camden. And he came there because that is where his brother was. But his brother did not achieve anything in life. I do not mean to say he did not achieve anything in life. But his claim to fame in life was just being the brother of Walt Whitman. He is not the transformative individual of Dr. Martin Luther King. So, we see, different shades of bigotry-

SM: 1:44:09
My gosh.

LW: 1:44:10
-denial of the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King. So that is one of the projects that I am involved in. And other than that, I am just getting old. [laughter]

SM: 1:44:18
We all are. Yeah, I-I want to thank you for, and I apologize for the delay. And let me turn this out. Thank you very much. And I am going to turn the tape off right now. Thank you. Thank you, Linn.

(End of Interview)

2021-08-06

Stephen McKiernan

Linn Washington

Linn Washington is a professor of journalism at Temple University. He continues to work as a professional journalist where he specializes in investigative news coverage and analytical commentary. Washington also serves as an expert commentator, including appearances on CNN and the BBC World Service. He has a Bachelor's degree in Communications from Temple University and a Master's degree in the Study of Law from Yale Law School.  Washington is also a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program.

1:44:33

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Activism; 1960s; News; Television; Media coverage; Watergate hearings; Journalism; Police brutality; Blacks; Racism; Civil Rights Protest; Vietnam War; Bigotry; Dr. Martin Luther King.