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A Failed Crusade:
Newsroom Integration and the Tokenization of John Sengstacke
By
Gwyneth Mellinger
Associate professor of journalism
Baker University
P.O. Box 65
Baldwin City, KS 66006
[log in to unmask]
(785) 594-4554
Submitted to the History Division
of the
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
31 March 2006
Copyright 2006
Gwyneth Mellinger
A Failed Crusade:
Newsroom Integration and the Tokenization of John Sengstacke
In 1972 a small group of editors urged the American Society of
Newspaper Editors to take up the cause of newsroom integration, but
to no avail. Through analysis of primary materials, this paper
traces the ways in which the editors' attempt to enact social justice
was repeatedly subverted, often by their own actions. Central to
this argument is a discussion of the ASNE's tokenization of John
Sengstacke, the organization's first black member.
A Failed Crusade:
Newsroom Integration and the Tokenization of John Sengstacke
In 1972 a handful to members urged the American Society of Newspaper
Editors to take up the cause of newsroom integration, but to no
avail. Through analysis of archival materials, including
correspondence between ASNE President C.A. McKnight and Norman
Isaacs, a former president who led the crusade, this paper traces the
ways in which the editors' attempt to enact social justice in the
newspaper industry was repeatedly subverted, often by their own
ambivalence toward the social change they championed. Central to
this argument is a discussion of the ASNE's tokenization of John
Sengstacke, the organization's first black member, and the editors'
use of "professional standards" to maintain journalistic
apartheid. This paper also contextualizes the early efforts to end
all-white newsrooms alongside the editors' nascent sense of an
ethical and democratic imperative for newsroom integration.
A Failed Crusade:
Newsroom Integration and the Tokenization of John Sengstacke
During his career in journalism and academia, Norman Isaacs
grew accustomed to playing the odd man out in professional
controversies. A thoughtful, idealistic editor with a crusader's
distaste for ambiguity, Isaacs always began from the premise that the
editor's covenant required him to serve as a moral compass for his
community. Dismayed by the widespread ethical failings of
journalism, Isaacs tried unsuccessfully as president of the American
Society of Newspaper Editors in 1969-70 to interest the organization
in starting an ethics enforcement procedure and later would take up
the cause of the National Press Council, a noble though ill-fated
attempt to hold news media accountable for their conduct.1 In this
way, Isaacs frequently cast himself as a nagging conscience that many
of his fellow editors preferred to ignore. Given his habit of going
against the grain, it seems fitting that Isaacs would assume the task
of formally introducing the ASNE membership to the need for newsroom
integration. After months of work through the ASNE's first Minority
Employment Committee, which he chaired, Isaacs stood before the 1972
ASNE convention to report that non-whites comprised just
three-quarters of 1 percent of the professional employees in daily
newspaper newsrooms. "It supports the assertion that we have,
indeed, been racist in our employment practices throughout our years
in the calling," Isaacs told his fellow editors.2 For the most part,
Isaacs' audience greeted the news with indifference and this initial
effort to promote newsroom integration sputtered to a halt. With
little to show for its labor and the number of non-whites working in
daily newsrooms virtually static, the Minority Employment Committee
disbanded in 1974. "It is the committee's feeling that after three
years of repeated checking [on the number of non-white journalists],
it has served its purpose for the time being," Isaacs reported.3
The work of Isaacs' Minority Employment Committee was the
American Society of Newspaper Editors' first significant response to
the rebuke delivered in 1968 by the National Advisory Commission on
Civil Disorders, more commonly known as the Kerner Commission. The
presidential commission, which investigated the causes of the urban
uprisings from 1964 through 1967, devoted a chapter of its report to
exploring the news media's role in perpetuating the "black-white
schism" in American society that had precipitated violence in the
cities. One of Chapter 15's most significant contributions was its
emphasis not only on the need for diversity in news coverage but also
its insistence on integrated hiring in journalism. The Kerner
Commission did not mince words on this point, framing newsroom
integration as democratically expedient and urging that non-whites be
among newsroom decision makers who shaped news content. "It is
unacceptable that the press, itself the special beneficiary of
fundamental constitutional protections, should lag so far behind
other fields in giving effect to the fundamental human right to equal
opportunity."4 The forcefulness of this criticism undoubtedly caught
many editors off-guard, and the idea that non-whites should be
promoted into newsroom management positions probably was the point on
which the Kerner report met the greatest resistance, even if this
response was not always articulated directly.
This paper will explore the confluence of events in the early
1970s as the American Society of Newspaper Editors reacted to the
Kerner Commission's historic broadside and began its earliest efforts
to end segregation in the newsrooms of daily papers. As an elite
organization for newspaper journalism, which had set professional
direction for its members' newsrooms and for the newspaper industry
since its founding in 1922, the ASNE is an important nexus in the
American news media's historical relationship to race. The ASNE,
which had maintained an all-white membership until the 1960s, would
become the leader of the newsroom diversity movement through its
stewardship of a minority hiring initiative launched in 1978. For
that reason, this discussion of the ASNE's failed attempt to generate
support for newsroom integration in the early 1970s will help explain
why the ASNE's later effort to make newsrooms racially diverse places
of employment had difficulty garnering sufficient editor support to
meet the hiring goals attached to the initiative.5 By examining the
early anti-racist efforts of Isaacs and C.A. "Pete" McKnight, the
ASNE president in 1971-2, this paper will trace evidence of a
corrosive ambivalence, even among committed advocates for newsroom
integregation, which impeded the early movement to enact social
justice in American newsrooms. Central to this discussion will be an
analysis of the tokenization of John Sengstacke, the first African
American man to be admitted to ASNE membership or elected to its
board of directors.
In pursuing this line of investigation, this paper opens up a
new area of scholarly conversation. While some researchers have
considered Isaacs' role in preparing the 1972 minority employment
report, their treatments have tended to portray Isaacs as a
one-dimensional character whose own feelings about race are
uncomplicated.6 Given that Isaacs was a product of the same
journalistic apartheid he contested, this view is untenable. Lori
Demo has conducted thorough archival research into the post-Kerner
stonewalling by the ASNE and the Associated Press Managing Editors,
however her investigation was confined to the organizations'
institutional record and does not consider such artifacts as
correspondence among the principal players.7 A notable omission in
scholarship on the ASNE and race is the failure to examine the
interaction between Sengstacke and the white directors of ASNE, who
used Sengstacke to integrate the organization yet repeatedly
circumscribed his ability to contribute to the organization by
limiting him to roles defined by race.
While the Kerner Commission's equal opportunity discourses called
primarily for integrating newsrooms that were virtually all-white,
the report also envisioned a media sphere in which the "Negro press"
served a pivotal role in advancing democracy. The commission
wrote, "We believe, also, that the Negro Press — manned largely by
people who live and work in the ghetto — could be a particularly
useful source of information and guidance about activities in the
black community. Reporters and editors from Negro newspapers and
radio stations should be included in any conference between media and
police-city representatives, and we suggest that large news
organizations would do well to establish better lines of
communication to their counterparts in the Negro press."8 Even
though this limited endorsement positioned the black press as the
ghetto press and as being "useful" to the white press, the commission
granted the black media far more legitimacy than had the many white
editors who dismissed black journalists as being "unobjective" for
acknowledging an affiliation with a particular audience and
advocating on its behalf.9
In effect, the Kerner Commission suggested that an objective
view of U.S. race relations was not to be found in the
self-interested and narrow perspective offered by the white press,
which was a significant slap to the white media's sense of its own
eminence. And finally, despite the Kerner report's emphasis on
integrating white newsrooms and the implication that non-whites would
assimilate into these professional environments, the commission's
validation of the black press suggested that its representatives were
indeed "real" journalists. This was an important challenge to the
notion that the professional template of white daily journalism was
the only one that mattered. In this way, the Kerner report also
contradicted the argument, which had begun to develop currency among
editors, that "qualified" non-whites were not available for hire. In
short, the Kerner report directly contested many of the ideological
underpinnings of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, with
respect to race. The ASNE, however, treated the release of the
Kerner report as a non-event and the commission's critique seemed to
have a chilling effect on ASNE's discussion of race. Notably, the
ASNE Bulletin and convention programs carried far more discussion of
issues aligned with Kerner's Chapter 15 during the three years before
the report's release than during the three years afterward.10 While
the recognition of the non-white press' autonomy and entitlement to
access clearly reinforced progressive concerns about media
segregation, the report did not dismantle the separate-but-unequal
structures of media production or the prevailing notion that
non-white journalists should adopt the values of whiteness in order
to succeed in mainstream journalism.
Undergirding the ASNE's non-response to the Kerner report's
publication was a defiant sense of journalistic exceptionalism. This
belief that journalism functioned above the plane of mortal activity
allowed many ASNE members to ignore the constitutional double
standard created by their own insistence on a free press and their
continuing historical denial of equal rights to non-whites. But the
early 1970s also would be a period of awakening to the evolving
ethical precepts of journalism, most notably the profession's own
need for accountability, which had been treated as a platitude by
many editors. The accentuation of journalistic exceptionalism was in
some measure a defensive reaction to widespread public and political
attacks on the media, most notably by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew,
who delivered a series of speeches in November 1969 in which he
derided members of the media for their arrogance and suggested using
federal licensure to regulate television news reports about the Nixon
Administration.11 While some editors may have seen Agnew's critique
as an affront to the free press, Philip Geyelin of the Washington
Post noted that the press was widely regarded as arrogant and
indifferent to criticism. "The hard fact of the matter," he wrote,
"is that not one kind, but all kinds of people do not trust
us."12 While some editors dug in their heels, positioning themselves
as above the criticism, Isaacs and others tried to persuade their
peers of the importance of journalism ethics and public
accountability for the news media. In 1970 the ASNE board appointed
its first Ethics Committee, which would remain a standing committee
that took on special initiatives and participated in the
organization's routine.13
Despite clear signs that the ASNE was beginning to re-envision
its image and self-interest in conjunction with more exacting ethical
standards, the conversation did not yet encompass the notion that
journalism values, which theoretically were rooted in democratic
principles, might require white editors and journalists to share
power with non-white peers in traditionally white newsrooms. The
years immediately following the Kerner Commission were, therefore, a
time of transition, when the idea of integrating newsrooms and the
ASNE had appeared on the horizon and many editors were becoming
accustomed to its distant inevitability. This was not, however, a
time of concrete racial change.
"Starry-eyed Visionaries"
A racial moderate during the desegregation battles of the 1950s,
C.A. "Pete" McKnight of the Charlotte Observer may have seemed an
unlikely person to help Norman Isaacs open the door for the ASNE's
newsroom integration debate; however, like many Southern editors who
had stuck to the safe middle ground after the Supreme Court's ruling
in Brown v. Board of Education, McKnight evolved into a full-fledged
advocate for equal opportunity and civil rights for all
Americans. By the mid-1960s McKnight was even forcing the Bulletin
to discuss newsroom integration and attempting to develop awareness
of the need for proactive recruitment of non-white
journalists.14 Then, when he assumed the ASNE presidency in April
1971, one of his first acts was to appoint the special Minority
Employment Committee, with Isaacs as its chairman. Isaacs, a past
ASNE president and member of the board, had represented the
organization at a contentious meeting on non-white employment in
newsrooms, sponsored by the American Newspaper Guild and attended by
representatives of other professional journalism organizations. At
that gathering, Isaacs had made the case that editors were culpable
for journalistic apartheid. "We on newspapers are responsible for
the present state of affairs. We had a closed-door policy toward all
minority groups up until the recent past. … The publishers are not
your problem. ... It is the editors and managing editors, and once
their disposition is correct, proper, right, and they want to get it
done, they will get some hiring done."15 Isaacs suggested that the
next ASNE president appoint a committee to study newsroom
integration, and McKnight complied as soon as he assumed the post.16
Over the next year, leading up to the 1972 convention and Isaacs'
inconsequential attempt to sell the ASNE membership on newsroom
integration, the Minority Employment Committee, composed of Isaacs
and six other members, would work diligently to define the newsroom
segregation issue through a survey of members at daily newspapers
with circulations greater than 75,000, where the most interest in and
previous experience with hiring non-white journalists was assumed to
reside. From the beginning, however, members' resistance to newsroom
integration was undercutting the effectiveness of the
effort. Moreover, Isaacs and his committee made the perceived lack
of qualifications of non-white journalists a contingency in
addressing newsroom integration. In doing so, they gave white
editors who wanted one a ready excuse for maintaining a white
newsroom, such that responsibility for the effort's failure could be
handily blamed on non-whites who allegedly failed to meet the
professional standards of journalism. As one editor wrote, "We have
bent our standards pretty drastically to give an unqualified, but
promising minority applicant a chance. But this has never worked out
and I am convinced such lenience serves no good purpose, either for
the individual, or for us."17 By the summer of 1971, members of
the Minority Employment Committee were sending personal letters to
ASNE members, soliciting answers to a series of questions about the
number of non-whites they had hired, what positions these employees
had held, how the non-white employees had performed in relation to
other staff members, whether non-whites were paid the same as whites,
whether the editors had recruited the non-whites, how the editors
felt about having non-whites on the news staff, and whether the
editors believed non-white staffing would continue to be an
issue.18 The slant of the committee's questions reflected Isaacs'
emphasis on obtaining "qualitative appraisals of the work of minority
staffers" and his fear that non-whites' lack of journalism ability
would cause "a good deal more trouble in the years to come."19 In
contrast with his passionate advocacy for non-white hiring, such
equivocation sent mixed signals about the direction he was setting
for the project.
The concern about qualifications was in fact a defense and
reaffirmation of the racial hierarchy of professional journalism,
which posited the white journalist as the norm and as being uniquely
capable of "objectivity," of exercising sound "news judgment," and of
producing "accurate" news stories while abiding by certain
conventions of written English. In effect, as the embodiment of
"normalcy" in journalism, the white journalist or editor was
constructed as being outside the circuit of racial identity, as being
unmarked, unraced, and ideologically pure. This discursive formation
rested, of course, on elaborate structures of inequality but also on
the simultaneous production of the non-white journalist as a marked,
raced, and biased "Other."20 Moreover, the qualifications on which
white editors insisted were those that had developed from five
decades of the ASNE's effort to mold professional standards through
journalism prizes, accreditation, and the like, which produced an
exclusionary mechanism that had maintained the sanctity of the white
newsroom. These were standards by and for white journalists, and
they sought to invalidate the sort of noncompliant journalism
practiced by the black press and other newspapers on the
margins. While white editors frequently raided the newsrooms of
black newspapers in order to achieve token integration, these black
hires were the primary target of the complaints about
qualifications. Second, while qualifications and professional
standards clearly are social constructions, as used in this context
and posited as inflexible they hint at tired, old racist ideas about
innate ability and the myth of race as biological difference. In
this way, the argument that non-whites did not meet the standards of
journalism, particularly in the areas of writing and critical
thinking skills, implies that the shortcoming is natural and,
therefore, insurmountable. This position rests on the assumption
that white journalists were superior but, more importantly, that they
represented the norm against which non-white journalists would be
judged and invariably would come up short. And finally, the issue of
qualifications offered white editors who did not want to integrate
their newsrooms a socially acceptable, and even noble, reason for not
doing so. After all, they were not practicing racial discrimination,
they were maintaining the integrity of journalism. As one editor
told the Minority Employment Committee, "We think that yielding to
any pressure to adopt a quota system, or adopting any criteria except
ability would damage our product."21 More was at stake here than
"damag[ing] our product," however. If editors had granted legitimacy
to non-white journalists and non-white presses, it would have been
tantamount to acknowledging that all journalists report the news from
a raced location and that even the white daily press is incapable, by
virtue of its subject position, of neutrality or objectivity.
But the issue of standards did not work in isolation, as the
concern about qualifications was linked to a running complaint from
many ASNE members about the unavailability of non-white
journalists. "The big trouble isn't with the editors now," Isaacs
wrote to McKnight in August 1971. "They (most of 'em, anyway) are
ready and willing. The supply just ain't."22 Again, this discursive
strategy reinscribed segregated newsrooms as a development over which
white editors had no control. As with the claim that non-whites who
wanted to work in daily newsrooms were not qualified, the supply
excuse not only let editors off the hook but went a step further and
implied that any criticism of editors who had failed to integrate
their newsrooms was misplaced and unfair. According to this
reasoning, accountability for segregation in journalism lay squarely
with uncooperative non-whites who were either unwilling or
unqualified to take the jobs that suddenly were said to be readily
available. Former journalist James Aaronson exposed the folly of the
supply argument in the March 1972 ASNE Bulletin: "One thing
[editors] could do is abandon the 'qualification' standard which is
rarely raised when a bright, talented, untutored white youngster
comes along and they are challenged to take a chance."23
As it went about its work of collecting information, the
Minority Employment Committee sought to avoid alarming editors who
might perceive the committee as encroaching on editors' autonomy or
threatening their conception of racial hierarchy. In his final
report, Isaacs acknowledged that the committee had met with some
"denunciations for meddling and trouble-making; personal slurs; some
patent evasions. Fortunately, the overwhelming number of responses
can be reported as serious, thoughtful and often painfully
soul-searching."24 It appears, however, that the committee catered
to some extent to those who resisted the idea of newsroom integration
and the ASNE's involvement in the effort. In the case of the
questionnaire sent by at least one committee member, Larry Jinks of
the Miami Herald, the text contained the assurance that the committee
was not really seeking to change the racial imbalance in
newsrooms. "Let me emphasize," Jinks wrote, "that facts (and a few
opinions) are all we're after now. We're not in the placement
business, and we're not exhorting anyone to do anything."25 While
Isaacs and his committee members undoubtedly were sincere in their
recognition of newsroom segregation as a grave injustice, these
conciliatory gestures toward editors who presided over all-white
newsrooms worked against the egalitarian aims of the committee's
work. In addition, while some editors reported positive experiences
with non-white employees, the thrust of the report was that the
non-whites who were available for hire were, by and large, inferior
journalists: "The expressions of interest being what they are, the
Committees believe that from 50 to 100 minority professionals could
be placed on newspaper staffs overnight. There is one proviso — the
disputed word 'qualified.' The Committees have been compelled to
conclude that there is no such pool of adequately qualified minority
professionals presently available."26
Anticlimax and Ambivalence
Despite the ASNE's tendency to divert blame for mono-racial
newsrooms onto non-whites, Isaacs held firm to the idea that the
final report would be sufficiently compelling to open the eyes of
recalcitrant editors to the need for newsroom integration. As early
as August of 1971, as survey results began coming in, Isaacs
envisioned his committee's work making a splash at the 1972
convention. He wrote McKnight, "Too early to be jumping to the Big
[sic] assumptions, but it ought to be a damned provocative report,
come April. Maybe, Pedro, even a high level Program item. The new
boss man of the Urban League? Some big shot from the USofA to say
what's in the government's collective mind, some editorial genius who
isn't afraid to take the rocks for saying what he thinks, and some
young black or Chicano newsman to tell how he sees it all?"27 When
the 1972 convention arrived, however, the minority employment segment
of the program would fail to match Isaacs' grand
expectations. Isaacs would be joined on the program by allies
Charles Kilpatrick, the white editor of the San Antonio Express, and
Robert Maynard of the Washington Post, an African American journalist
who was a leader of the Summer Program for Journalism, a minority
training institute at Columbia University. As the convention neared,
however, Isaacs wrote McKnight to express concern that he was
continuing "to struggle with the problem of luring an honest doubter
onto our platform. … I most certainly understand the delicacy, but
we do ourselves no honor and offer no enlightenment if we cannot talk
— even gently — of some of the touchy areas affecting minority
staffing."28 Again, the concern about non-whites' journalistic
qualifications and skills was the sensitive issue editors preferred
not to discuss publicly. Ultimately, sixteen editors who had
reservations about newsroom integration, including Sylvan Meyer, the
Education Committee chair, who presumably was the co-author of the
joint report, declined Isaacs' invitation to appear on the
program.29 As it was, the one-sided program did not fare much
better. Richard Cohen, a Washington Post reporter who attended the
1972 convention and wrote a convention diary that was published in
the ASNE Bulletin, reported that the "Newspapers and Minority
Employment" panel was "the worst-attended session yet. It begins
late and backs into the trip to the White House. The women are
upstairs getting ready. The men, too, have to get ready."30
Isaacs, Kilpatrick, and Maynard made a powerful case for the moral
and ethical imperative of newsroom integration. In arguing that his
committee's major finding, that just three-quarters of 1 percent of
daily newsroom employees were non-white, was evidence of racism in
the profession, Isaacs held himself up as a repentant sinner. His
address to the ASNE offered a compelling testimonial of his
transformation from an editor who saw whiteness as "normal" and as
the seat of "objectivity" to an editor who recognized whiteness — and
thus himself — as racially situated and as complicit in perpetuating
racial inequality.
Even though my credentials as a crusader for civil liberties and for
the equality of opportunity for all races were honorable in
motivation through my first 25 years as an editor, I came to
recognize that I was practicing a double standard. I thoroughly
believed my contention that I was in truth colorblind. Yet while I
took many a long shot on white reporters, deskmen and photographers,
I somehow always thought it necessary to exercise the greatest of
care when it came to hiring minority staffers. … Even some of us whom
many of you regard as starry-eyed visionaries were much less
visionary than we should have been — and as a result contributed to
holding back journalism.31
For his part, Kilpatrick labeled as myth the idea that qualified
non-whites were unavailable for hire and laid the blame for slow
hiring on the attitudes of middle managers.32 Maynard's contribution
to the program was a frank and powerful statement of black
discontentment that stunned even Cohen, his empathetic white coworker
at the Washington Post. Cohen wrote in his convention diary for the
Bulletin, "I know Bob. I have worked with him, partied with him. He
says, 'I want to invite you to see how the newsroom looks to a
black. What he sees is racism in the raw.' It is clear that I
really don't know Maynard at all."33
The empirical evidence suggests that the panelists' ethical appeal
failed to produce much effect. A year later, in 1973, the Minority
Employment Committee said it could find no direct indication that the
hiring push had produced a backlash but that only a minimal increase
in the number of non-white journalists could be discerned at daily
newspapers. But for the addition of forty-four non-white journalists
in the newsrooms of the Knight Newspapers chain, the number would
have been flat. In addition, the committee issued an alarm about
editors' obvious disinterest in the issue. "Matching the lessened
ardor of the public at large, recruitment activity among minorities
by newspapers has diminished considerably," the committee reported.
34 In 1974, the committee found editors so disengaged from the
project that it was unable to obtain a sufficient number of responses
to requests for information to allow the calculation of an employment
total. By then, the committee surmised, non-whites may have
accounted for 1 percent of the professional employees in
newsrooms. In addition to sharing the news about editor indifference
to newsroom integration, the committee indicated that concerns about
non-whites' qualifications had become thoroughly entrenched. "Many
editors focus on the tension between their determination to maintain
their newspapers' editorial standards and their eagerness to hire
blacks, many of whom have sharply weaker credentials than average
white applicants," the committee's final annual report said.35 And
so it was that liberal good intention deferred, albeit reluctantly in
many cases, to deeply embedded notions of white privilege and
non-white inferiority. Nowhere is such ambivalence more evident than
in the ASNE's uneven treatment of John Sengstacke, the organization's
first African American member and director.
A Tentative Welcome
Sengstacke's election in 1965 as the first African American member
of the ASNE was significant enough to warrant mention in a noted
history of the black press.36 As the editor of the Chicago Daily
Defender, which had published a daily edition since 1956, Sengstacke
was deemed eligible for membership when the ASNE became motivated to
admit a black member. The Defender had not met the ASNE membership
criteria in 1958, when the membership application of managing editor
Louis Martin was rejected because, under the convoluted logic
employed at the time, the paper fell outside the ASNE's guidelines
for a daily paper of general circulation and sufficient
quality.37 In the mid-1960s, however, when civil rights reform
brought pressure to bear and the ASNE became obligated to integrate
its membership, the organization was unable to find any black editor
but Sengstacke to whom it could extend membership under the existing
daily newspaper criteria. White-run daily newspapers simply did not
have non-white directing editors and most black-owned papers were
weeklies, with the exception of the Chicago Defender and the Atlanta
World, whose editor never became interested in joining ASNE.38 And
so it was, almost by process of elimination, that Sengstacke became
the first black member of ASNE, and the only one until 1973, when
Martin was allowed to join as well.
Sengstacke's relationship to the ASNE appeared to be an uneasy
one. In their dealings with Sengstacke, but more particularly in the
way they talked about him behind his back, several prominent figures
within the ASNE leadership circle did a poor job of concealing their
disdain for him. We are left to speculate about Sengstacke's view of
ASNE, but it seems unlikely that he failed to recognize his
membership as a gesture of tokenism that had only recently become
politically expedient.39 At the same time, membership in ASNE may
have represented a personal triumph for Sengstacke, as his
professional trajectory had been shaped by the racial exclusion that
had defined the newspaper industry. As publisher of the Defender
since 1940, Sengstacke had been a major leader in the black press, as
it battled Jim Crow during the 1940s and 1950s and endured the
criticism of ASNE stalwart Virginius Dabney and other prominent white
journalists.40 Sengstacke also had been a founder and the first
president of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, which was a
direct response to the exclusionary framework that now wanted to
embrace him.41 Given such circumstances, it is quite possible
Sengstacke harbored deeply mixed feelings about ASNE membership, just
as some in ASNE appeared to have been ambivalent about him.
Sengstacke was elected to membership in 1965 and then elevated to
the board of directors in 1970, a distinction usually reserved for
members who have made extraordinary contributions to the organization
through committee work. Ironically, from 1966 to 1971 Sengstacke is
not listed on any of the committee rosters published in the annual
convention proceedings. Even so, Sengstacke breezed onto the board
with substantial member support for his ascension. In November 1969,
as the 1970 board slate was being assembled, Nominating Committee
Chair Mark Ethridge Jr. indicated that Sengstacke had been suggested
by more than one person. From an extensive list of possible
candidates, Sengstacke then survived a series of "personal
blackballs," involving three separate votes by members of the
committee to reach consensus on a slate of candidates for the April
1970 ballot. Sengstacke advanced to the April elections as the
third-highest vote-getter in the final committee balloting, coming in
behind George Chaplin of the Honolulu Advertiser and James Bellows of
the Los Angeles Times.42 Clearly, ASNE members wanted a black man on
their board of directors.
Given the enthusiastic support Sengstacke received during the
election process, it is curious that within a year he apparently had
developed a somewhat prickly relationship with certain ASNE leaders,
including Pete McKnight and Norman Isaacs. The friction likely
emerged in conjunction with their expectation that Sengstacke assist
with the recruiting of blacks and with the extent of his contribution
to the Minority Employment Committee. It appears that the ASNE
leaders' attitudes toward him were in many cases racially
insensitive. From the beginning, Sengstacke was pigeonholed and
given tasks having to do with race rather than those that might
benefit the organization or the profession generally. For example,
he was suggested for membership on the Education in Journalism
Committee in 1969 when the idea of doing outreach to non-white high
school students first was discussed.43 He agreed to serve on the
Minority Employment Committee in 1971 and was offered membership on
the Program Committee, where his role also would have been defined by
his race. Just before his election to the ASNE presidency, McKnight
wrote to Gene Giancarlo, the organization's executive director, "I
had asked John Sengstacke to serve on Warren Phillips' program
committee, thinking he might be useful if blacks figure in the 1972
program. He declined because of other commitments but I suspect we
will be able to call on him if needed."44 At the same time that his
utility as a recruiter of black convention speakers was being
discussed, Sengstacke also had been assigned the job of trying to
find black editors who would be eligible for ASNE membership, even
though he was not on the Membership Committee.45 Given the
constraints of the ASNE membership criteria, finding black members
was a nearly impossible job, yet the ASNE leaders assigned it to
Sengstacke and expected him to produce results.46 In this way, ASNE
leaders framed Sengstacke's participation in the organization solely
in terms of race, and thereby circumscribed Sengstacke's
effectiveness as an ASNE director.
The ASNE leadership's dissatisfaction with Sengstacke became
heightened over the subject of the fall board meeting in 1971. At
this gathering, which was to be held at the Grandfather Golf and
Country Club in Linville, NC, Isaacs' Minority Employment Committee
was to give an interim report on its efforts to assess the level of
non-white employment in newsrooms as well as attitudes about newsroom
integration and on plans for the presentation at the 1972
convention. Isaacs was scheduled to be out of the country in October
when the board was to meet, and he expected Sengstacke to present the
report to the board in his stead. In late summer, Isaacs became
annoyed when he was unable to contact Sengstacke to discuss the
assignment. In a letter to McKnight, Isaacs lodged a barbed
complaint that suggested Sengstacke's commitment to the ASNE Minority
Employment Committee was less than Isaacs would have liked. He
wrote, "I'm having the customary troubles with Brother
Sengstacke. I've phoned him twice. He's reported 'out.' I'm due in
Chicago next week again and will bird-dog the be-Jesus out of
him."47 Six weeks later, after Isaacs had secured Sengstacke's
commitment to present the report, McKnight sent Sengstacke the
following terse note:
Dear John,
Norman Isaacs tells me that you will be prepared to make the report
at the fall board meeting for the minority employment committee.
This is a very important undertaking and I am certain your
report will stir much discussion that will be helpful to your
committee in the coming months.
I look forward to seeing you at Grandfather.
Sincerely,
C.A. McKnight48
Given Isaacs' dissatisfaction with "Brother Sengstacke" and the
note's tone in the first two paragraphs, which are a stern reminder
of the obligation to present the report, this communication can be
read as an indication that McKnight on some level does not regard
Sengstacke as an ordinary member of the ASNE. Would he have
exercised the same degree of condescension with another editor? If
Sengstacke was not interested, why not simply have someone else read
the report? Why was it so important to force Sengstacke's compliance
with what appeared to be an inter-racial ventriloquism routine? The
task, after all, was merely to read a report written by Isaacs, which
any member of the committee could do.
Sengstacke also was at the center of another controversy involving
the fall board meeting, and this one revolved around McKnight's
decision to hold the gathering at the Grandfather Golf and Country
Club. While the ASNE's spring board meeting is held during the
annual convention, the fall meeting is convened at a location chosen
by the president, frequently in the president's home state. A year
before the meeting was to be held, McKnight began making arrangements
with Grandfather's management to bring the board there, and this
included negotiations for Sengstacke's attendance. Even though Jim
Crow was no longer the law of the land, integration had not yet
arrived at many U.S. resorts and country clubs, and certainly not
this one in North Carolina. Correspondence between McKnight and the
Grandfather management makes clear that if not for the clout of the
ASNE, a black person likely would not have been welcomed as a
guest. At this time, however, the club's developer, Hugh Morton, was
more interested in gaining exposure with an upscale crowd that would
include such luminaries as Vermont Royster of the Wall Street Journal
than in preserving racial tradition. In a letter to the club's
president, urging him to allow the ASNE meeting to be held there,
Morton wrote,
There is no resort in the country that is open to increasing
its membership or property sales that would not go all-out to land
this select meeting. We are fortunate that Pete is in line to be
President, and that he thought enough of us to investigate. …
The only fly in the ointment is that one of the Board members
is the Editor of the Chicago Defender and a Negro. Pete McKnight
assures me that he is a gentleman of the highest order, and that
there has been no difficulty created by his attending meetings at
Palm Springs and Maine in the last two years. I feel that most of
our people recognize that we live in a day that matters like this
must be taken in stride, but wanted to pass it along to you for a decision.49
While one might credit McKnight with forcing a North Carolina
golf resort to allow its first African American guest, the choice of
meeting location raises questions about the ASNE's sensitivity to the
politics of being a black visitor to a Southern resort in
1970. McKnight promised Morton he would not disclose the discussions
about Sengstacke's race, and in all likelihood he maintained the
confidence, which would mean that Sengstacke probably received no
assurance that he would be welcome at the club and would not be
embarrassed when he tried to check in or requested service. As a
black man who had lived the daily experience of racial prejudice and
developed a finely honed sense of racial boundaries, Sengstacke had
to have known that his presence at the Grandfather Golf and Country
Club was ticklish. While it is entirely possible that the idea of
breaking the color barrier at the resort brought Sengstacke
satisfaction, it is more likely, given the lack of enthusiasm for
participating in the meeting he demonstrated to Isaacs, that he faced
the trip to North Carolina with unease.
This appears more probable when the Grandfather meeting is
juxtaposed with the initial findings of the Minority Employment
Committee. The preliminary report Sengstacke would read to the board
asserted the argument that black journalists were substandard and not
worthy of daily journalism. This disparagement was directed not only
to African Americans in general but also to those affiliated with the
black press, and it would be unrealistic and even imprudent of
Sengstacke not to take this personally. Given the tension produced
by his designation as a racial token in the ASNE and his history of
professional and activist involvement in the black press, Sengstacke
must have found participation in the ASNE and its Minority Employment
Committee to be an intensely self-alienating experience.50
Sengstacke was re-elected to the board in 1973, rotated off after he
had served the maximum two terms, and remained a member of ASNE until
1995. For whatever Sengstacke and Louis Martin, who was elected to
membership in 1973, brought to the ASNE through their symbolic
integration of the organization, they ultimately did not win
respect. In 1977, when James Powell, the Nominating Committee chair,
asked if he should be trying to recruit a woman or black editor to
the board slate, he received this response from Gene Giancarlo, the
ASNE's executive director: "There are presently only two black
editors in the Society, one of whom, John Sengstacke, was a director
for six years. During that time his contribution to the board and to
the Society was almost zero." Then Giancarlo characterized Martin in
a patronizing way and cast doubts on his professional abilities, when
he wrote, "The other man, Louis Martin, works for John and, I
believe, is on the verge of retirement. Louis is a very affable and,
probably, capable newspaperman."51
Conclusion
The problem that Powell and his Nominating Committee
encountered was, of course, the result of the membership criteria,
which required an ASNE member to be a directing editor of a daily
newspaper. Although some members professed concern that Sengstacke
was the only African American member of ASNE, the organization was
unwilling to change the requirement that members be affiliated with
daily newspapers, which would have made more non-white editors
eligible to join. In August 1971, McKnight received word that John
Woodford, editor of Muhummad Speaks, was interested in ASNE
membership. With a circulation of 600,000, Woodford's paper,
published by the Nation of Islam, was the largest black-owned paper
in the 1970s.52 As a weekly, it clearly did not meet the daily
newspaper criterion, so the possibility of Woodford joining could be
foreclosed for ostensibly race-neutral reasons. Despite his interest
in integrating the profession, McKnight defended the ASNE membership
restrictions — and excused their discriminatory result — in
correspondence regarding Woodford's inquiry.
The ASNE Constitution provides that: "Persons of suitable
qualifications who are directing editors having immediate charge of
editorial or news policies of daily newspapers which, in the opinion
of the directors, shall have attained adequate journalistic
standards, are eligible to membership."
That's why John Sengstacke of the Chicago Defender is the only
black editor in the Society. His is the only black daily.
Moreover, in recent years, we have not had any applications
from black directing editors of other U.S. dailies; perhaps because
there are none.
This is bothersome.
I have appointed a special committee to review the ASNE
Constitution—all sections of it—to see what revisions are needed.53
Although McKnight acknowledged that the membership criteria
contributed to a "bothersome" situation, the matter disappeared into
the special committee. McKnight's records of that committee's work
contain no indication that the possibility of revising the membership
rules to make the ASNE more inclusive was seriously discussed, and
the batch of proposed amendments generated by the special committee
does not address the membership definition.54 Not until 1978, with
Albert Fitzpatrick's promotion at the Akron Beacon-Journal, would an
African American editor at a white-run daily be able to join. While
Isaacs, McKnight, and other likeminded white members of the ASNE
acknowledged the inherent injustice in newsroom segregation, it is
less clear that they recognized such exclusion as more than job
discrimination. The issue of non-whites' ability to meet
professional qualifications tailored by and for white journalists was
central to the question of their employability. Lacking from the
ASNE leaders' discussion is evidence that they saw historical
apartheid in journalism as having broader consequences for society or
the profession, and certainly the tone, if not the content, of
discussions about the problem often suggested that the ASNE had not
yet conceptualized newsroom integration as an ethical imperative that
trumped other, baser concerns, such as spelling and grammar. Rather,
the evidence suggests that even the more progressive ASNE members
were unwilling to grant non-white editors full standing in either the
organization or the profession. In opening the ASNE membership to
Sengstacke, whose paper had been deemed unworthy less than a decade
earlier, the ASNE could deny that it barred blacks from membership
any longer, but Sengstacke clearly was not granted the respect
accorded to white members and directors. Given the ASNE's reluctance
to integrate its own ranks in the 1970s, it is little wonder that the
organization's leaders would have difficulty generating broad support
for the minority hiring initiative they undertook in 1978.
Notes
1. Isaacs' commitment to journalism ethics was not new. In
1955, he delivered the William Allen White Memorial Lecture at the
University of Kansas on the topic "Conscience and the Editor." Isaacs
also wrote passionately of press irresponsibility in his book,
Untended Gates: The Mismanaged Press (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986), laying out his case for the National News Council,
which operated from 1973 to 1983. A detailed narrative on Isaacs'
failed attempt to interest ASNE in a grievance procedure is found in
Paul A. Pratte, Gods within the Machine: A History of the American
Society of Newspaper Editors, 1923-1993 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 15-19.
2. "A Joint Report from the Committees on Minority Employment
and Education for Journalism," American Society of Newspaper Editors,
20 April 1972, 2, and Problems of Journalism: Proceedings of the
American Society of Newspaper Editors, 19-21 April 1972,
134. Hereafter, volumes in this series will be given a shortened citation.
3. In its 1974 report, the Minority Employment Committee said
it had been unable to ascertain a census for non-white newsroom
employees but that the figure probably had reached 1
percent. Information-gathering had been thwarted by editors' failure
to respond to requests for data. 1972 proceedings, 241
4. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders (New York: New York Times Co.: 1968), 363, 383, and 387
5. In 1978, the ASNE board adopted the minority hiring
project and set a goal of bringing non-white employment in daily
newspaper newsrooms into parity with the U.S. non-white population by
the year 2000. The parity goal remained elusive and in 1998, when
non-whites accounted for 11.46 percent of professional newsroom
employees but 28 of the U.S. non-white demographic, the ASNE board
voted to set new goals. "Frequently Asked Questions about ASNE's
Diversity Mission Statement," undated,
http://www.asne.org/kiosk/diversity/DIVERSITYFAQ.html
6. See, for example, Orayb Najjar, "ASNE Efforts Increase
Minorities in Newsrooms." Newspaper Research Journal 16, no. 4
(1995): 126-40 and Alice Carol Bonner, "Changing the Color of the
News: Robert Maynard and the Desegregation of Daily Newspapers,"
Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1999. Notably,
the official ASNE history by Pratt devotes just four paragraphs to
newsroom integration in the early 1970s (pp. 134-5) and hints at none
of the internal tension that afflicted the organization and is the
subject of this paper.
7. Lori Demo, "The Shameful Delay: Newspapers' Recruitment of
Minority Employees, 1968-1978," paper presented to the Association
for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 1999
8. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 384
9. The black press was regarded by white editors as a
separate and unequal institution. White criticisms of the black press
are discussed by Wolseley, 368-77. Eugene Patterson, who would
implement the ASNE diversity initiative as president in 1978,
described the white perception of black newspapers in this way: "The
black press was perceived as being neighborhood coverage of black
community activity as well as special pleading for the minorities'
causes in public affairs, so it was not regarded as being a very
high-quality press in terms of objectivity, because usually it had a
very clear editorial point of view, which was for minority
rights." Eugene C. Patterson, interview with author, 11 October 2004
10. In the years immediately preceding the Kerner report, the
ASNE Bulletin featured such articles as these: Arthur Bertelson,
"Mass Media and the Racial News Crisis," 1 January 1966 (No. 493):
13-14; "Racial Disorders and the Role of Newsmen," 1 November 1966
(No. 502): 3; Lawrence Newman Jr., "A Time to Play It Cool," 1
December 1966 (No. 503): 15; Robert Mason, "How Does the Southern
Press Treat Negro Death Notices?" 1 July 1967 (No. 510): 3-5,8; Frank
L. Stanley Jr., "Race Poverty and the Press," 1 September 1967 (No.
511): 1-2, 12; and Ben Gilbert, "Race Coverage," 1 January 1968 (No.
515): 1-2, 13. Convention programs were "Civil Rights and the
Editor" and "Our Urban Dilemmas — Can We Lick Them?" 1965
proceedings, 78, and 1967 proceedings, 35
11. Norman Isaacs, "Agnew, the National Mood and the Media,"
ASNE Bulletin, January 1970 (No. 537): 1-7, 13
12. Philip Geyelin, "Regaining the Public's Trust," ASNE
Bulletin, July-August 1970 (No. 543): 3-4, 11
13. "The Board Votes to Establish an Ethics Committee," ASNE
Bulletin, April 1970 (No. 549): 19
14. Pete McKnight, "Where Are the Competent Newsmen Who
Happen to be Negroes?" ASNE Bulletin, 1 January 1966 (No. 493): 6-8
15. James Aronson, "Black Journalists: Why the Dearth?" ASNE
Bulletin, March 1972 (No. 558): 7
16. Board minutes 12 April 1971, 506, and 16 April 1971, 522.
17. "A Joint Report," 8
18. Isaacs, letter to John Troan, 30 July 1971, C.A. McKnight
Papers, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Box 4, Folder 18
19. Isaacs, letter to Ed Cony, 7 July 1971, McKnight Papers,
Box 4, Folder 18
20. Cheryl Harris, "Whiteness as Property," in Kimberle
Crenshaw et al., eds., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that
Formed the Movement, 276-91 (New York: New Press, 1995), 290
21. "A Joint Report," 3
22. Isaacs, letter to McKnight, 16 August 1971, McKnight
Papers, Box 4, Folder 18
23. Aaronson, 7
24. "A Joint Report," 2
25. Larry Jinks, letter to McKnight, 9 July 1971, McKnight
Papers, Box 2, Folder 3
26. "A Joint Report," 3
27. Isaacs, letter to McKnight, 16 August 1971, McKnight
Papers, Box 4, Folder 18
28. Isaacs, letter to McKnight, 30 March 1972, McKnight
Papers, Box 4, Folder 18
29. Isaacs, letter to McKnight, 30 March 1972, McKnight
Papers, Box 4, Folder 18, and 1972 convention proceedings, 134
30. Richard Cohen, "Convention Diary: How an Outsider Saw the
April Meeting," ASNE Bulletin (No. 560): 8
31. 1972 proceedings, 134
32. 1972 proceedings, 140-1
33. Cohen, 8
34. 1973 proceedings, 18-19
35. 1974 proceedings, 241
36. Armistead S. Pride and Clint Wilson II, A History of the
Black Press (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997), 204
37. The ASNE board minutes state, "Discussion of Mr.
Martin's eligibility hinged on the definition of a daily newspaper
(The Defender publishes daily four times a week and has a weekly
edition in addition) and on whether it is a newspaper of general
circulation with 'adequate journalistic standards' as required by the
by-laws, when, in fact, it is not available on newsstands throughout
the city and its appeal is specialized rather than general." This
explanation does not acknowledge that editors of other newspapers
that did not publish seven days a week or have general circulation
were allowed to join. Board of directors' minutes, 17-18 October 1958, 167
38. Martin would be inducted into ASNE membership in
1973. Interestingly, Martin's biography omits any mention of
ASNE. Louis Poinsett, Walking with Presidents: Louis Martin and the
Rise of Black Political Power (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1997)
Cornelius Scott of the Atlanta Daily World would have been a
likely addition to the ASNE, but in 1971 Sengstacke had been charged
with the task of recruiting black members into ASNE and reported that
Scott was not interested. Board minutes, 12 April 1971, 503, and
McKnight, letter to Isaacs, 22 October 1971, McKnight Papers, Box 4, Folder 18
39. Sengstacke did not write a published memoir. His
personal papers, which are being held by his heirs, have not been
made available for public inspection without payment of a locator fee
and a use fee. In correspondence with Sengstacke's son, I was unable
to determine whether the elder Sengstacke had preserved papers
relevant to his membership in the ASNE. Robert Sengstacke, e-mail
correspondence with author, 17 May, 18 May, and 1 August 2005
40. See Virginius Dabney, "Nearer and Nearer the Precipice,"
Atlantic Monthly 171 (January 1943): 94-100. Columnist Westbrook
Pegler also was a vocal critic of the black press during the
1940s. See Patrick S. Washburn, A Question of Sedition: The Federal
Government's Investigation of the Black Press during World War II
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 85-6.
41. Roland E. Wolsely, The Black Press, U.S.A., 2nd ed.
(Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990), 324-6
42. Mark Ethridge Jr., letters to the Nominating Committee,
13 November 1969, 5 January 1970, and 11 February 1970, Robert Henry
Mason Papers, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Southern
Historical Collection, Folder 37
43. Board minutes, 18 April 1969, 398
44. McKnight, letter to Giancarlo, 30 March 1971, McKnight
Papers, Box 4, Folder 3
45. Board minutes, 12 April 1971, 503
46. McKnight, letter to Norman Isaacs, 22 October 1971,
McKnight Papers, Box 4, Folder 18, and board minutes, 12 April 1971, 503
McKnight at one point even suggested that he might be more
effective in recruiting the editor of the Atlanta World than
Sengstacke. "I've been worrying over the fact that we have only one
black (Sengstacke) in ASNE," McKnight wrote. "He tells me he has
talked to the editor of the Atlanta World, the only other black
daily, about applying for membership but with no result. I may go
after him." McKnight, letter to Isaacs, 22 October 1971, McKnight
Papers, Box 4, Folder 18
47. Isaacs, letter to McKnight, 6 August 1971, McKnight
Papers, Box 4, Folder 18
48. McKnight, letter to Sengstacke, 25 September 1971,
McKnight Papers, Box 4, Folder 18
49. Hugh Morton, letter to Wilson Williams, 4 November 1970
and related correspondence, McKnight Papers, Box 3, Folder 12
50. One is reminded here of Michael Warner's theorization of
the minority subject in a public context. He wrote, "We are the 'we'
that can describe our particular affiliations of class, gender,
sexual orientation, race, or subculture only as 'they.' … The
political meaning of the public subject's self-alienation is one of
the most important sites of struggle in contemporary
culture." Michael Warner, "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," in
Habermas and the Public Sphere, 377-401, Craig Calhoun, ed.
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 387
51. Giancarlo, letter to Powell, 9 August 1977, James Powell
Papers, University of Arkansas Library, Box 2, File 12
52. Wolseley, 90-91
53. McKnight, letter to Harold Lappin, 13 August 1971,
McKnight Papers, Box 4, Folder 18. In his response on 17 August
1971, Lappin noted that the Atlanta World was another black-owned daily.
54. "Proposed Amendments to the Society's Constitution,"
ASNE Bulletin, March 1972 (No. 558): 26, and "Amendments Ratified,"
ASNE Bulletin, May-June 1972 (No. 560): 22
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