Video (Click titles to view): Start - Goodman discusses his early days in journalism. Running Time 2:49 Pressures - Goodman compares the racial dynamics in the newsrooms of the New York Times and Look magazine. Running Time 3:05 QuickTime required to view videos » Click here to download QuickTime

George W. Goodman

Despite a Masters degree in journalism and working three years reporting experience at the Los Angeles black weekly Sentinel, George Goodman couldn't get hired at the Associated Press.

He had applied several times only to be told he was not qualified. Then the Watts Riots exploded.

Desperate to get inside coverage of the riots, the Associated Press realized it had to rely on African Americans for the access its white reporters could not get. On the first day of the riots, Goodman suddenly was qualified.

The 1965 riot ignited after the arrest of an African American young man charged with reckless driving. A police officer drew his gun and a crowd of onlookers started to fight the police. Goodman remembers having to negotiate with suspicious white police who hadn't realized the AP had temporarily hired black reporters to cover the story. At the same time, he had to assuage African Americans' fears that he was not an informant for the establishment.

As a journalist, it was one of many lessons in walking between two worlds.

'It was a scary time," says Goodman, now 63.

Having the unique position of working at the Sentinel, a paper his uncle Leon Washington, Jr. founded and owned, Goodman observed and chronicled the growing tensions that led to the riots. Both the mayor and the city council ignored complaints of police brutality and discounted the issues of Watts riots, particularly housing and unemployment, which had risen to 30 percent among African American wage earners.

"You could see it coming," Goodman says.

When the riots were over, the AP declined to give Goodman a permanent job. He still did not meet the minimum qualification of five years experience as a reporter. They did, however, ask him to write a manual on riot coverage, an offer that he accepted.

Though his job with the AP was temporary, but Goodman made the most out of it. Henry Moon, NAACP's editor saw one of Goodman's wire pieces and invited him to write an article for Crisis. That article got him a subsequent job with the Countywide New Service, a Los Angeles county wire service.

His work at the CNS led to an editor position with Ebony magazine. They sent him to the head office in Chicago where he became steeped in black celebrity coverage. He also wrote pieces on Blacks in the South and the problems of black medial schools. While he appreciated his meetings with people such as James Baldwin, Dick Gregory and Jesse Jackson, he also had a desire to write about black nationalism and people outside of the mainstream black community.

"A lot of stuff they didn't write about that the AP didn't write about either," Goodman says.

He spent one year at Ebony. He was later hired at Look Magazine in New York by Dave Maxey, managing editor of Look Magazine.

The job opened up a new world for Goodman who traveled around the world including Brazil and Nigeria. He worked with some of the hottest photojournalists of the era such as Gordon Parks and John Vachon. At Look, Goodman enjoyed working in a tension-free atmosphere with colleagues who felt more like family than journalism competitors. The magazine's owner Mike Cowles made it one of the magazine's missions to improve race relations between blacks and whites in the country. But Goodman's time at Look lasted just a few years.

By 1971, Look, like most general interest magazines, was forced to close its doors. Advertising revenue failed to keep the operation afloat. But Goodman would land on his feet scoring a reporting job with the New York Times. There he would be reminded how race sometimes colored editors' impressions of a reporter's abilities.