"Black Journalists Movement" Series Features Videotaped Interviews with Prominent Black Journalists
Contact:
Dori Maynard
President, Maynard Institute
510-891-9202
OAKLAND, Calif., (February 20, 2002) - The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education is using video on the Web to tell a forgotten chapter of journalism history.
The Maynard Institute this week launched "The Black Journalists Movement," a unique online oral history project that gives voice to black journalists recalling their struggle to integrate white newsrooms. Culled from interviews with some of the nation’s most prominent journalists, the collection serves as a reminder of the important contributions made by journalists of color.
The History Project and the Maynard Institute Web site is made possible through major funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
"This is one of the most significant projects ever undertaken by the Institute because it graphically illustrates the contributions of so many great journalists," said MIJE president Dori J. Maynard. "These stories are gripping accounts of what it took to change the world of journalism. These stories show how you can't have good journalism without including all of America's voices; a critical perspective at the very time when newsroom diversity is again under siege."
The continuing series will feature a new theme each month through the end of the year. In months to come, viewers will get a behind the scenes look at events that shaped our nation from coverage of the race riots and the Vietnam War to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This months installment explores what it took for a generation of African-American journalists to break into the news business, and includes QuickTime video interviews with CNN’s Charlyne Hunter Gault, 60 Minute’s Ed Bradley, Institute co-founder Nancy Maynard and legendary journalists Earl Caldwell, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Claude Lewis and Bloods author Wallace Terry.
The collection is part of the Maynard Institute History Project, an on-going effort to document and preserve the stories of those courageous African American journalists who broke into general circulation media during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. The Institute plans to document the stories of journalists from other ethnic groups who also broke general circulation barriers in the news media.
The project launched in 1999 with "The Caldwell Journals," a personal account of the black journalists’ movement written by Caldwell a former reporter and columnist who now hosts a thrice weekly radio show.
The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (MIJE) is the leading organization dedicated to training journalists of color and to helping the news media reflect the nation’s diversity in staffing, content and business operations. Incorporated in 1977 as the Institute for Journalism Education, MIJE was renamed in 1993 to honor its first chairman, the late Robert C. Maynard, former owner and publisher of the Oakland Tribune.
to top of page