Title
The race beat : the press, the civil rights struggle, and the awakening of a nation / Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff.
Summary
This is the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South--and the brutality used to enforce it. It is the story of how the nation's press, after decades of ignoring the problem, came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the twentieth century. Drawing on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews, veteran journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff go behind the headlines and datelines to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen--first Black reporters, then liberal Southern editors, then reporters and photographers from the national press and the broadcast media--revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings and propelled its citizens to act.
Contents
An American dilemma: "an astonishing ignorance ..."
"A fighting press"
Southern editors in a time of ferment
Ashmore views the South
The Brown decisions harden the South
Into Mississippi
The Till trial
Where massive and passive resistance meet
Alabama
Toward Little Rock
Little Rock showdown
New eyes on the Old South
Backfire in Virginia
From sit-ins to SNCC
Alabama versus The Times, Freedom Riders versus the South
Albany
Ole Miss
Wallace and King
Defiance at close range
The killing season
Freedom summer
Selma
Beyond.