Video: Click titles to view Early Days - When Audreen was still in junior high school, her father taught her how to analyze news stories. Running Time 2:03 Billie Holiday - Audreen slips into a local club to see one of Billie Holiday's last performances. Running Time 3:09 Philadelphia Independent - Audreen's first newspaper job is with the Philadelphia Independent. Running Time 3:35 Redbook - Audreen joins Redbook and works for editor Sey Chassler. Running Time 2:47 Black Perspective - Audreen begins attending meetings of the fledgling journalism group, Black Perspective. Running Time 3:08 QuickTime required to view videos » Click here to download QuickTime

Audreen Buffalo

"The press should always be proxy for the people."

Audreen Buffalo as associate editor at Redbook in the late 60s had suggested running a companion piece to the profile on ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev, a piece that would profile a comparable black artistic figure. When asked who she thought would be good, she replied, Nina Simone.

None of the white editors knew who the singer was. The more Buffalo thought about this the angrier she became. She spoke up.

"You know this is very interesting that I can know who Nureyev is but you can't know who Nina Simone is," Buffalo told her colleagues. "This is one thing we need to look at a little more closely."

The staff at Redbook was open to filling the cultural gap, but Buffalo says several newsrooms in New York at the time who were struggling with similar issues were not as willing to expand their understanding of African Americans.

"There was a huge cultural divide," says Buffalo. "We had to explain simple things. Like should we capitalize black or not. A lot of blood was on the floor in publishing about whether to capitalize black or not."

To address some of these issues, black journalists in New York organized a support group of sorts called Black Perspective. The year was 1967 and a growing number of black journalists were integrating newsrooms across the country. Buffalo joined in 1969.

"At that time all of our heroes were each other," she says. "We needed to be around people who understood what we were going through. We needed to find a way to be comfortable with ourselves." Discussions and debates at Black Perspective meetings helped black journalists understand their role in the newsroom and clarified their mission as seekers of truth.

Buffalo grew up understanding the power of the press and saw early on its potential for misinforming rather than educating the public. As an adolescent she read the Philadelphia Daily News in her father's bakery when business wound down. Her father taught her to read the paper with a critical editorial eye, questioning the subtext of every story. From this exercise she came to believe "the press should always be proxy for the people. If it's not doing that, it isn't doing its work."

She got her first reporting job with the Philadelphia Independent, which billed itself the world's greatest Negro tabloid. With an understaffed newsroom, the editor was willing to groom the young Buffalo and give her plenty of opportunities to cover significant news stories.

When she asked to cover Cecil Moore, Philadelphia's maverick civil rights leader, she got it. While covering Moore, she observed activism at its best, challenging power on behalf of the people. Some upper and middle class African Americans blanched at his no nonsense style and his insistence on bringing common folks into the fold. Buffalo loved watching him in action as he strategized in his pursuit for equal access.

"Cecil spoke truth to power," she says adding that he wasn't afraid to say no. "I knew what it meant to say no to power."

Buffalo left Philadelphia in 1966 for New York and found a job with CBS in their record division as an assistant to the archivist. She met hattie gosset (now a poet), the first black editor at Redbook. Gosset was preparing to leave the magazine and wanted to suggest Buffalo as her replacement. In 1969, Buffalo became one of four blacks working on the editorial staff at that time. Editor-in-chief Sey (Chassler) was a rare person who saw the value in integrating his staff at a time when few did, she says.

Two years later Buffalo moved to Essence, which was not quite a year old. The magazine grew out of the black consciousness movement and Buffalo found herself in the midst of a collective introspection as black women tried to redefine themselves and standards of beauty. She stayed there five years and later dabbled in documentary film before returning to editing for Lear's, a short-lived magazine that targeted older women. She also worked at Time Inc. on its pioneering interactive television project.