White Reporters Out!

In Harlem on the Sunday that Malcolm X was killed, two reporters were right up front in the Audubon Ballroom, so close to the podium that when the shooting started, they had to dive to the floor for cover.

Stanley Scott

Being there changed a lot for the two journalists. But how it happened that Stan Scott and Gene Simpson got into the ballroom at all that afternoon played a large part in ushering in a whole new era for reporters who were black.

In the epilogue The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the writer Alex Haley explained how. Haley said, on the day of his assassination Malcolm X specifically ordered that no press be allowed inside the Audubon Ballroom.

When Scott and Simpson arrived for Malcolm's meeting they had their press credentials in clear view. At the door, they were greeted by one of Malcolm's lieutenants. "No press allowed," he told them.

Stunned, the two of them stood pondering the "no press" edict. A suggestion was volunteered. Malcolm's aide pointed to their press credentials. "Put 'em in your pocket," he suggested. They complied. Once they did that, they were told, "As black citizens, you can go on in."

And that afternoon the two of them got what reporters dream of -- the experience of being there, of being wherever it is at the precise moment that something truly important happens.

Stan Scott was covering that day for the UPI news service; Gene Simpson was with WMCA radio. After the kind of exclusive the two of them had, there were significant rewards to be reaped. Stan Scott was enticed to leave UPI and join WINS radio, then New York's premier all-news station. Simpson was lured to television, first as a writer at the local CBS station in New York and then, to WABC as an on camera reporter.

But it was what Malcolm's supporters did that brought swift and definable change to the news media. They concluded that his "no press" order was proof that Malcolm X had decided that the time had come to put the black community and black meetings off-limits to reporters who were white. And they also concluded that if Malcolm X had made an exception for reporters who were black, then they ought to follow the same practice. And so, grieving and wanting to do something to honor their slain leader, they made it their cause to keep white reporters out of black meetings.

On arriving in New York City as a reporter for the Herald Tribune, I was to witness nothing more shocking than the tense confrontations that ensued when white reporters showed up in Harlem and other black communities to cover meetings and rallies. Seldom did anybody ever bar them at the door. They would always let the reporters inside and even get seated. It was like baiting a trap. Then, as soon as the meeting was about to begin, the show would start.

"Wait, wait, wait," someone would shout and, pointing toward the reporters who were white, the question would be asked: "What are they doing in here?" And then it was on. Voices got louder, people jumped to their feet, and immediately they began shouting the demand.

"White reporters out!"

"White reporters out!"

On occasion, when those reporters did not leave fast enough or dared to argue a right to stay, they would be grabbed and roughly ushered out the door. Those of us who were reporters and black discreetly put our notebooks and pencils away, but we did not budge from our seats and nobody ever attempted to force us out.

The Associated Press, already embarrassed at being scooped by UPI on the assassination of Malcolm X, responded by opening a news bureau in the heart of Harlem. Gil Scott and Hollie West, both blacks, were the two reporters assigned to the bureau.

Gil Scott, born and raised in Brooklyn, had joined the AP in January of 1963. He began his career in journalism in 1957 as a desk assistant at CBS. In 1959, he moved to the Reporter-Dispatch in White Plains, New York, where he worked as a sportswriter. His career was interrupted briefly when he was recalled to active duty in the military. After the service, he came back to journalism as a reporter at the Newark News, where he joined John Dotson as the only other black reporter on staff. He stayed there until he was hired by the Associated Press.

Hollie West came to the AP just after the assassination of Malcolm X. He had come to New York in 1964. A native of Wewoka, Oklahoma, Hollie joined the AP after working at The Oakland Tribune, where he had broken through in July of 1963. His job at The Tribune made him the first black reporter on a daily newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area.

By the time the AP got its Harlem bureau up and running, the summer of 1965 was fast approaching. A lot of news organizations pondered the same question: "What are blacks going to do?" Some 3,000 miles from Harlem -- on Central Avenue, on 103rd Street, on Avalon Boulevard -- on streets tucked away in south central Los Angeles, an area that didn't even have a name yet, the answer was about to be delivered.