ABSTRACT
Two Tales of One City: How Cultural Perspective Influenced the Reporting of a
Pre-Civil Rights Story in Dallas
Author: Camille R. Kraeplin, University of Texas-Austin
Newspaper coverage of a series of racially motivated bombings that took place
in Dallas, Texas, in 1950 tells two different stories. A weekly black
newspaper, the Dallas Express, perceived the fight to end the bombing of
black-owned homes in white neighborhoods as a battle over civil rights. The
Dallas Morning News, on the other hand, wanted the violence stopped, but could
not conceive of a solution outside of the segregationist status quo.
Two Tales of One City: How Cultural Perspective Influenced the Reporting of a
Pre-Civil Rights Story in Dallas
Submitted to the History Division, AEJMC
Spring 1998
Author: Camille R. Kraeplin
Mailing address: 6018 Yellow Rock Trail, Dallas, TX 75248
Phone: 972-503-6449
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Two Tales of One City
Throughout this decade, multiculturalists have been quite vocal in their
criticism of the establishment press for what they perceive as its insensitivity
to minority groups. They have condemned the mainstream media both for their
failure to tell minority stories and for the way minority stories are told.
Historically, ethnic minorities have not been "gatekeepers," the media
decision-makers who determine what information becomes "news," in America's
newsrooms. Although minorities today comprise more than a quarter of the
nation's population, they represent only about 19 percent of broadcast newsroom
employees and only 11 percent of the newsroom staff at the nation's
newspapers.[1] Critics argue that this contributes to a distorted view of
minorities and their concerns. As David Shaw reported in his Pulitzer
Prize-winning series that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in the early 1990s:
If all one knew about real-life blacks and Latinos in particular was what one
read in the newspaper or saw on television news -- one would scarcely be aware
that there is a large and growing middle class in both cultures going to work,
getting married, having children, paying taxes, going on vacation and buying
books and VCRs and microwave ovens.
Only 15 percent of the poor people in the U.S. are black, but one would not
know that from most press coverage. Nor would one know that most violent
criminals, drug-users, prostitutes, drunks, illiterates, high school dropouts,
juvenile delinquents, jobless and poor people in this country are neither black
nor Latino but white. Or that the vast majority of blacks and Latinos are none
of the above.[2]
Marilyn Gist of the University of Washington offers one of the harshest
critiques.[3] She has suggested that negative media portrayals have an effect
on the way individuals and institutions treat minorities: "To what extent do
biased journalistic practices contribute to police practices in the war on drugs
or crime? To what extent are the higher rates of incarceration among
African-Americans a function of subtle racism among judges and juries -- racism
perpetuated by media bias?"[4]
Critics of minority coverage may have intensified their attacks in recent
years. But the issue has been on the table for much longer. Nearly 30 years
ago, the Kerner Commission blasted news organizations for contributing to the
racial unrest of the 1960s.[5] Specifically, the commission reported that
although the press had covered incidents of unrest, these accounts failed to
explain the underlying causes of the conflict.
Newspaper coverage of a series of racially motivated bombings that took place
in Dallas, Texas, in 1950, just as the Civil Rights movement was taking its
first tentative steps, offers some insight into these charges. African-American
news photographer R.C. Hickman covered the city's black community for the Dallas
Express, a weekly black newspaper, during the '50s. According to Hickman, the
stories of black people at that time were not reported by the city's two
metropolitan dailies:
They didn't want the history of integration recorded. The Dallas Morning
News wouldn't carry a picture of us unless a black man raped a white woman or
maybe if a preacher got run over. We did everything the white folks did. We
died, got born, we got married. We went to school and got degrees, but no one
was recording it.[6]
The bombings were an exception. No right-minded journalist could ignore an
explosion, especially one loud enough to be heard for miles. Thus, both the
Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Express covered the events, but each told a
different story. The Express perceived the fight to end the bombings as a
battle over civil rights. The Morning News, on the other hand, wanted the
bombings stopped, but could not conceive of a solution outside of the
segregationist status quo.
The First Bomb Attack
In the post-war years of the 1940s, Dallas began to experience growing pains as
both black and white Texans, hungry for jobs, flocked to the cities.[7] The
result was a housing shortage and by 1950, most of the city's families lived in
crowded West Dallas slums. Anxious to escape these conditions, blacks who could
afford it started buying homes in working-class white neighborhoods. Many
settled in the Exline Park area of South Dallas. And on Feb. 8, 1950, this is
where the bombings began.
Horace Bonner and his wife had gone to bed that evening when a dynamite
explosive tossed from a car landed beside their home at 2515 Southland. No one
was injured, but the blast shook the house, shattering windows and ripping off
strips of siding. Bonner, 57, who worked for a printing firm, told police that
he had bought the house through a real estate agent in January for $6,000. The
Bonner family, which included Mrs. Bonner's mother, Mrs. Ella Mays, was the
third black family to move into the neighborhood. The Bonners' neighbor on the
west side, a white man named J.E. Dugan, told police that another neighborhood
resident had approached him a few days before the attack and suggested that the
black families be run out of the area -- with bombs, if necessary. "I told him
that wasn't the right thing to do," Dugan said. "I told him we should get out
ourselves."[8]
Both papers reported Dugan's remarks. But the Dallas Express also placed the
bombing within the context of the critical shortage of housing for black
Dallasites. For instance, the Express' Feb. 18 story reporting the bombing
noted that the explosion occurred in "an area where a large block of homes
formerly occupied by whites before being sold to Negroes and others are up for
sale." The story also suggested that this was not the first unneighborly
display by the area's white residents: "This bombing followed a short while
after molesting and threatening by white men of some white women salesmen who
were showing the home to Negroes for purchase."[9]
The day after the bombing, Mayor Wallace Savage told the Morning News that
police would make every effort "to find and punish the perpetrator." But
Savage's explanation of the causes of the violence suggest he did not completely
sympathize with the victims: "Actually neither the man who threw the bomb nor
the Negro who moved into a white neighborhood is primarily responsible," Savage
said. "The incident was a symptom of a serious condition in Dallas that most be
remedied."[10]
Savage's conception of a "remedy" apparently did not include allowing blacks
like the Bonners to buy the homes that represented their ticket out of the
ghetto. The color bar still stood between these families and the post-war
American dream -- a dream realized by many white middle-class families.
Instead, Savage proposed asking the Dallas Housing Authority to build additional
public housing to relieve the shortage.
In his book The Accommodation, Dallas author Jim Schutze writes about the
history of race relations in the city during the 1950s and '60s. According to
Schutze:
Mayor Wallace Savage, a liberal for the period, took the serious political
risk of insisting the housing needs of the poorest of the city's poor black
people be met with public funds. But the bombing of the Bonner family posed a
different dilemma -- the issue not of poor blacks, who could be concentrated
into small areas, but of black people who had as much money as white people,
who could afford to buy and own homes. At the bottom of the bombings, Savage
saw not an evil or maliciousness but the predictable consequences of a
breakdown in apartheid. What was needed, he said, was more segregated housing
for these inconveniently solvent black families.[11]
At the time, many Dallasites questioned whether public housing was the best
answer. Not surprisingly, one such group was the Dallas Home Builders
Association. On Feb. 11, H. Leslie Hill, the association's president, told the
Morning News that Dallas builders would be able to end the housing shortage
within a year, once the City Council located a building site. He argued that
the private sector offered the best hope for ending attacks on black homes in
middle-class neighborhoods: "We don't see the necessity of tying a Negro
bombing into the public housing issue. Public housing is not the answer to a
bomb being thrown. Any man who buys a $6,000 house is not a candidate for
low-rent housing built by the government."[12]
Building the necessary housing would be the easy part. It was the council's
task, deciding where to build, that represented the political hot potato. As
Councilman Jess S. Epps said in blunt Texas fashion: "Everybody wants more
Negro housing, but they want it in some other part of town. The problem is to
find a place."[13]
Racial violence did not upset the city's precarious peace again until early
March. On March 4, the Morning News reported that arsonists had set fire to a
black-owned home only a few blocks from the Bonner house. According to a
neighbor, the new owners had planned to move into the house the following
weekend. They would have been the only black family on the street. Luckily,
the blaze was caught before it could do much damage. The black owners of a
South Dallas theater were not so lucky a few days later when a fire razed the
structure, causing $25,000 in damages. Investigators told the Morning News that
the origin of the blaze was unknown. But one of the proprietors said he
believed "it was definitely set by someone."[14]
The Dallas Express quickly linked both fires to the bombing and to the city's
housing crisis. "Negro Housing Incites Bombing, Fires, Protest" exclaimed the
banner headline across the weekly's March 11 issue.[15] A story about the house
fire, which ran with a photograph of the damaged home, reported: "The menacing
of Negro residents who move into areas formerly occupied by whites apparently
took a new twist last week."[16] While a story about the theater fire did not
go so far as to allege arson, it did note that the blaze "followed by just a few
days the burning down of a Negro home in South Dallas" and that the theater "had
stirred a slight controversy in South Dallas which has been having racial
troubles over housing."[17]
Community Conflict: White Versus Black
The same issue of the Express carried the text of a petition, signed by
ministers representing an interdenominational coalition of 162 black churches,
protesting against City Council plans for a black "River Bottom City." Located
in West Dallas, on the Trinity River flood levee, the site was unacceptable, the
petition said. Representatives of the Negro Chamber of Commerce had already
rejected it at an open council hearing. The ministers "pleaded" that the
council ask the Dallas Housing Authority to proceed with immediate construction
on other available land. They closed with an appeal to councilmembers to work
with the black community "in the spirit of harmony, patience, democracy and
devotion to the fundamentals of real Christian living" to find a solution that
would be acceptable to all.[18]
But white South Dallas residents were not waiting idly for a council decision.
As the Express reported:
A group of white residents of South Dallas, aroused by the infiltration of
Negro purchasers of homes, began a series of meetings. They were encouraged in
these meetings by ten pastors of churches in the neighborhoods who finally
staged a meeting attended by nearly 1,000 angry whites. It was the second such
meeting in four days.[19]
At the meeting, the Rev. John G. Moore, pastor of Colonial Baptist Church, read
a list of resolutions forming the South Dallas Co-operative Association, the
Express reported. The association "would act as a clearing house for people
with property to sell" and "select and use a 'reputable' real estate agency
which would refuse to sell such properties to Negroes."[20] In a final related
article in its March 11 issue, the Express' editors added their own 2 cents to
the clamor over housing. While firm, their front-page editorial hardly
qualified as combative. Like other black leaders, they suggested that the land
proposed by the city for black housing units was unfit, except perhaps for a
community of waterfowl. It certainly was not fit for human habitation:
Many plots that would be ideal have been protested because whites object to
having Negroes close to them. The 3,000-odd acres in the river bottom are
protested by Negroes because they are presently death traps in the time of
flood. It is difficult to see how the council can guarantee the drainage
necessary to warrant the expenditure for homes in this area. To accept it
without the knowledge that security will be placed there, through proper
drainage, will put the Negro leader in a place to be repudiated by the masses
of their people.[21]
The Second Bombing
The second bombing came nearly two months after the first. Garland Mathis had
just purchased the home at 2527 Exline, in an all-white neighborhood just a few
blocks from the first bomb attack. So the two-story house was empty the evening
of April 3, when a dynamite bomb thrown through the window reduced it to rubble.
The powerful blast even shattered windows in nearby homes. A foot-long piece of
copper wire, which police believed came from the bomb, was found amid the
timber. The Dallas Morning News described the scene: "An outside stairway was
blown askew and inside floor joists and flooring smashed into kindling by the
force of the blast. A small depression was blown in the earth under the house.
Doors were splintered and all the windows were shattered."[22]
The Morning News story ran on the front page accompanied by a photo of what was
left of the shattered structure. The saga offered elements no editor could
resist: violence, destruction, emotion. The News found a (reasonably)
sympathetic victim in Mathis and printed his response in typical disaster-story
fashion. "I made the down payment and signed a mortgage for $5,444 at 7 percent
interest," Mathis said. "I intended to move into the house, but I don't know
what I'll do now."[23]
The next day, the Morning News decried the violence in a short editorial titled
"Dynamite Law." But the editors only criticized the bombers' means. They
sympathized with the culprits' goal of maintaining racial segregation: "Bombing
of Negro homes in Dallas is not the way to protect property lines of
segregation. Gangster law cannot protect anything that is good and right. It
can only make for deep and bitter wrong."[24] Express coverage conveyed a sense
of crisis as well as growing disillusionment with police progress in the cases:
"The bomb throwers, who as usual have not been apprehended, were bent on total
destruction of the home."[25]
The Third Bombing
A month later, on May 8, a dynamite bomb was tossed onto the roof of a house at
2638 Pine St., near the sites of the first two attacks. The explosion lit up
the night sky like fireworks, attracting as many as 2,000 spectators, the
Morning News reported.[26] People from as far as five miles away reported
hearing the blast. But this time the house was occupied. Robert and Marie
Shelton were in bed when the bomb ripped through their ceiling, tearing the
newspaper Robert Shelton was reading into pieces. Marie Shelton was unhurt, but
flying debris cut her husband's face, shoulder and legs.
Both newspapers told the sensational story. Only the Express, however,
addressed the issue of most concern to Dallas blacks -- the failure of police to
protect their lives and property: "Police have declined to give what has been
termed adequate protection for the area -- as has been stated, this might
encourage Negroes to move in this section, and also encourage some whites to
sell who otherwise would not."[27]
A few days later, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People presented a petition calling upon city officials to put an end to the
bombings to Dallas City Manager Charles C. Ford. Although similar petitions had
been circulating in the African-American community for months, they had
generally escaped the notice of the Dallas Morning News. This time the paper's
editors paid attention. According to a story in the Morning News' Metropolitan
section on May 11, the petition "charged officials with apathetic unwillingness
to do anything about the bombings." The story, which ran under the headline
"NAACP Demands City Stop Home Bombings," quoted at length from the petition:
It has been publicly attributed to the Mayor and city officials that they are
afraid to give protection to Negro residents of South Dallas lest the very act
of protecting them be understood as encouragement to them to purchase homes in
the area. If this be true, and it has not been denied or reputed, it is
indicative of an attitude which the petitioners believe to be wholly unworthy
of men in public office.[28]
The News dutifully carried City Manager Ford's response to the charges. He
said that "there had been no lack of interest in the bombings, and no lack of
effort to find the perpetrators." Another section of the petition published in
the story said that when Mayor Savage had been questioned about the city's
response to the bombings once before, he had "casually observed that the bombing
of homes of Negroes was but an incident (pointing) to the prevailing housing
shortage for Negroes in the community, and hence a part of the prevailing crime
wave that has come upon our city." Finally, the News wrote, "the petition said
that its sponsors want to believe 'that the plight of Negro home owners in South
Dallas is not a hopeless one. But we submit that vague and evasive promises
will not be sufficient to reassure an abused public.' "[29]
On May 12, the News reported that the NAACP had offered a $500 reward for
information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bombers.[30] No similar
offers of cash rewards from Dallas' white church or civic groups were reported.
But the Morning News' Lynn Landrum offered an analysis of how best to approach
the problem in his popular column "Thinking Out Loud." To start with, the
bombers should target the people who were most responsible for the misdeeds:
"Let's bomb the appropriate victim. Let's bomb the seller of white property
rather than the Negro buyer who is seeking a roof for his wife and babies.
Let's bomb the real estate man to blame for it. If there is to be terror and
intimidation, let the vendor beware."[31]
Of course, Landrum did not seriously believe that anyone should be attacked, he
told his readers. The bombings were "utterly stupid" because endangering
sleeping families and destroying their homes would not "vindicate anything."
"It does not win sympathy or moral support for anything. Instead of making
segregation more secure, it only endangers it more." The police were not
entirely to blame for failing to stop the attacks. Nor was the sheriff or the
Texas Rangers, or any other law enforcement agency that had been called in on
the case: "Quite probably the trouble about law enforcement in such a case is
that responsibility is divided. With many agencies charged with the duty to
stop potential murder, there is hemming and hawing about who shall take the
burden of the job."[32]
The Black Response
The nocturnal bombings had by now become a rallying point for the black
community. Fearful and disillusioned, black homeowners were rapidly losing
faith in the ability of police and city officials to protect them. Black
citizens were instead taking steps to protect themselves. On May 27, the Dallas
Express reported that the reward offered by the NAACP leadership for information
leading to the bombers had been increased to $1,000. In addition, the Dallas
NAACP leadership, together with community ministers, was considering "further
steps to take." Dallas' normally conservative black clergy were "firmly in
support of the militant position the NAACP has taken in the matter," a Baptist
church leader told the Express.[33]
The Express devoted the lead story in its May 20 issue to the NAACP petition.
A banner headline read "NAACP Spearheads Move To Stop Bombings." The story ran
under the headline "NAACP Wants Equal Protection for Negroes."[34] Thus, while
the Morning News emphasized black citizens' demands in its coverage of the NAACP
petition, the Express emphasized their rights. The Express printed what
appeared to the entire petition. One section went so far as to suggest that
some members of the Dallas police force might have been active participants in
the bomb attacks.
Bomb Attacks 4 & 5
By late May, race relations in the city were at a boiling point. Events of the
first week of June provided further fuel for the fire. Shortly after 9 p.m. on
June 2, an explosion literally shook the foundation of a frame home at 2628
Pennsylvania in South Dallas. Police said a tin container of dynamite had been
left alongside the house, where it blew a gaping hole in the earth. A black
taxi driver named Dennis Hoffman had purchased the home earlier that day but had
not yet moved in, so no one was harmed. But one neighbor said the explosion
threw him out of bed. Another said his home was rocked by the blast. Hoffman
would have been the fifth black to move into the neighborhood. Less than 24
hours later, an empty house at 2515 Marburg was gutted by an explosion.
Dynamite piled on the kitchen floor had blown out the kitchen ceiling, ripped
away three interior walls and shattered all the windows. Neighbors said a black
family had recently purchased the home.
The Morning News did not talk to the homeowners for its coverage of the fourth
and fifth bombings. In the latter case, the homeowner was not even identified.
The Dallas Express, on the other hand, identified both men and printed the
reaction of one. Johnnie L. Staton, the owner of the Marburg home, was a World
War II veteran with a wife and two daughters. He had recently sold his home of
four years and planned to move into his new home the following Monday. When
asked whether he intended to keep the gutted house, Staton told the Express, "I
just don't know what I am going to do now." The Express also printed a reaction
from the police: "Police officers said they were pressing investigations of the
bombing but have no clues on any of the five bombings that have occurred in
Dallas in recent months."[35] Both newspapers placed the events in context by
relating them back to earlier bombings. Only the Express, however, mentioned
the housing crisis or NAACP demands for arrests and better police protection in
the area.
In the wake of the back-to-back bombings, Dallas officials stepped up attempts
at damage control. On June 5, the Morning News reported that Dallas police had
doubled a bomb patrol of South Dallas and added more investigators "to probe the
explosions that have damaged five houses in the area."[36] On June 6, the
Greater Dallas Planning Council urged the City Council to appoint a biracial
commission "to look into disputes between Negroes and whites and recommend
solutions to racial problems," the News wrote. such a commission "would
consider proposals for Negro housing as well as other matters affecting racial
problems in Dallas," a planning council official told the newspaper.[37]
Black & White Media: Reporting Different Realities
The following day, a number of citizens groups appeared before the City Council
to demand action to end the bombings and improve the housing situation. Both
the Morning News and the Dallas Express covered the meeting. But the two
reports could have described different events. The News account, which ran
under the headline "Council Moves to Give Negroes Public Housing," emphasized
the council's decision to ask the Dallas Housing Authority to build 1,000 public
housing units for blacks within the next year.[38] The council also "urged
private builders to continue their efforts to solve the Negro housing shortage,"
the News said. The council's actions were prompted by demands from leaders "of
a dozen groups, both Negro and white," who appeared at the meeting. The News
also carried Mayor Savage's response to charges that city officials had
instructed police to look the other way in the bombings:
That is not true. There is just one instruction that has been given police --
enforce the law. We want you to know there have been no secret instructions.
The police are doing what they can.
We think we will find the perpetrators of the bombings, but it may take time.
You seem to think that because we haven't caught them that we are not doing
anything. We try to put down robberies, but they haven't been stopped.[39]
The Dallas Express' coverage of the same June 6 City Council meeting ran
beneath the headline "Negroes and Whites Parade in Protest."[40] The story's
lead emphasized what the black community perceived as the most urgent -- and
newsworthy -- issue: the bombings of their homes. Where the Morning News had
reported that about a dozen local groups had taken part in the protest, the
Express said that 31 organizations, both black and white, were involved. In
addition, while the News reporter did not explicitly interject any opinions into
his copy, the unsigned Dallas Express story sprinkled opinions throughout the
description of the day's proceedings. And unlike any of the News' coverage, the
story referred to a similar string of bombings in Dallas nearly 10 years ago in
1941 that had also gone unsolved:
Again the Mayor attempted to class the wave of bombing violence and
destruction with ordinary crimes such as robbery, and burglars are caught,
brought to trial and serve...terms but no bombers have [been] caught....
The only Councilman to respond was Mayor Pro Tem G. Stubbs. He said it takes
time to catch criminals. But he was asked by a Negro spokesman if he did not
think ten years was enough time. Not in ten years has a single bomber been
caught and prosecuted. His answer appeared to invalidate his claim and that of
the Mayor that these bombings are like burglaries or any other
"run-of-the-mill" crime. The Mayor said they deplored these bombings and that
they and police were doing the best they could.[41]
The Sixth Bomb Attack
For more than a month, no explosions illuminated the dark Dallas nights, with
the exception of the city's Independence Day fireworks celebrations. Then at
approximately 9:40 p.m. on July 7, a dynamite explosion destroyed an unoccupied
five-room frame house at 2410 Marburg in what police called the worst in a
series of South Dallas bombings. The explosive, which police said could have
been thrown through a window or placed inside, tore apart the east side of the
house, caving in the roof and one wall. Investigators estimated the damages at
$3,500 to $4,000 and said the structure had been so weakened that the house
could not be rebuilt. Neighbors said a white family had moved out on June 5 and
the house was now for sale. Two black families had stopped to look at the home
that afternoon.
The issue of whether police were providing sufficient security for the
terrorized neighborhoods had by now become politically charged. Thus, the News
as well as the Express reported that 12 police officers had been on duty in the
neighborhood the night of the bombing. And 30 more officers would be called in
to patrol the troubled area on a 24-hour basis. In addition, police had found
their first clues in the cases: a burning mop that might have been used to place
the dynamite and a set of tire tracks and footprints in the driveway.
The NAACP quickly responded to news of the explosions. On July 9, the Morning
News reported that the group had appealed to Texas Gov. Allan Shivers for help.
The newspaper reprinted part of the group's telegrammed message. It also
carried Police Chief Hansson's response. Hansson told the News that he now had
40 men -- about 10 percent of the entire force -- assigned to the investigation
and did not believe any state assistance was needed "at the present time." He
admitted, however, that the investigation was moving slowly, but said that lack
of cooperation from South Dallas was hampering police progress. According to
one detective assigned to the case, "People who have information won't give it
to us -- they either don't want to tell us, or they are afraid to."[42]
On July 10, the Morning News renewed its call for an end to the bombings. The
editorial, titled "Halt Bombing Now With Prosecution," suggested that arrests in
the cases were overdue. But at the same time, it appeared to downplay the
seriousness of the crimes, noting that since they had so far caused "no deaths
and little personal injury...credit can be given the perpetrators for a probable
wish to intimidate and not kill or hurt. It is faint praise. For sooner or
later the serious injury occurs accidentally if the bombings continue, or the
desire to frighten flames into the lust to kill."[43]
Overall, the editors' message remained unchanged. The violence must end. But
white homeowners should not be expected to welcome blacks, even middle-class
blacks, into their neighborhoods. Some other solution must be found.
Dallas is moving slowly, certainly right-heartedly, in the direction of more
adequate available Negro housing. One deterrent is the objection of every area
to the encroachment of Negro residence housing. This is understandable enough.
Most whites prefer to continue segregation. Property values depreciate where
two areas conflict and residence desirability decreases. But the expansion is
necessary and certain, so much so that we will see it in many sections of
Dallas. Our main duty is to stop the bombing outrages cold while we go about
settling the larger problem of which these destructive acts are no solution
except in the troubled minds of unhappy and misguided people.[44]
The July 15 issue of the Dallas Express ran with the banner headline "Governor
Refuses to Help Stop Bombing of Homes," a story that never made it into the
pages of the Morning News. "Gov. Shivers, in effect, refused this week to help
stop the bombing of Negro homes in Dallas," the Express reported.[45] In short,
the governor referred the NAACP request for assistance to the State Department
of Public Safety. That agency, in turn, followed the "usual course" of leaving
the investigation in the hands of city police. Thus, Gov. Shivers had
effectively side-stepped the problem, but could not actually be accused of
fiddling away in Austin while homes in Dallas burned. This report ran as a
"bulletin" above a second story with the headline "25 Homes Bombed in Dallas."
The second story reported that although this was the latest in a string of six
bombings in as many months, another 19 had taken place in 1941, bringing the
total to 25, none of which had been prosecuted.
Conclusion
By late summer, the suspicions of many of Dallas' black leaders had been
confirmed. On Aug. 6, the Morning News reported that Dallas Police Chief Carl
Hansson knew the identities of the bombers.[46] But no arrests were made. It
was not until 1951, after two more bomb attacks, one of which demolished four
empty buildings, that police apprehended two suspects and charged them in
connection with one of the home bombings. and in the end, the arrests may have
been prompted more by white civic leaders' concerns about the effects the
continuing violence might have on the city's business climate than by repeated
demands for equal protection by the city's blacks.[47]
On March 18, 1950, in the midst of the string of bomb attacks, the Dallas
Express published an editorial with the headline "Why Negroes Risk the Bombing."
In answering the question implied in its head, this article also underscored a
basic difference in perception between the city's blacks and a white community
that still clung to segregationist practices:
This, then, is the primary reason why Negroes are willing to risk the bombing
of their homes in white neighborhoods: they have a constitutional right under
decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States to live wherever they wish
to live and can pay their way, and when the decent housing which they wish is
found in a neighborhood where other races happen to live, they are unwilling to
forego decent housing even at the risk of bombing.[48]
Like the Express, the Morning News coverage reflected perceptions that were
commonly held in the community which it served. However, a letter to the editor
which appeared in the News on April 10, 1950, suggests that at least some whites
had begun to question the morality, and enforceability, of racial separation,
especially in an overcrowded housing market that left blacks few options:
An editorial in the News expresses concern about "dynamite law," but even as
it deplores the bombing of Negro homes it indicates that something called
"property lines of segregation" needs to be "protected," and uses the words
"mounting pressure of Negro population on white housing areas" to describe the
apparently lawful acquisition of property by members of a minority group. And
while the editorial talks hopefully about establishing a Negro "city within a
city," there is nothing in it to suggest that the Negroes who bought the
disputed property had both a legal and moral right to do so and might, if
properly encouraged or simply let alone, develop into fairly decent
neighbors.[49]
The Kerner Commission's charge that the mainstream press failed to adequately
cover the social unrest of the 1960s due to cultural blinders certainly seems to
hold true in this earlier case. At that moment in history, the majority of
white Dallasites, like the majority of white Americans, simply could not
conceive of the changes in race relations that the next two decades would bring.
The journalists who reported the story of the 1950 bombings for the Morning News
brought to the coverage a cultural perspective that limited their vision. As a
result, they could not see the story for what it was -- a foreshadowing of the
Civil Rights battle that was to come.
[1] Kimbriell Granderson, "Minorities in the Media -- Not Only an Ethnic Issue,"
Boston University Web Page, Oct. 1, 1997.
[2] David Shaw, "Negative News and Little Else," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 11,
1990, p. A30.
[3] Marilyn E. Gist, "Minorities in Media Imagery," Newspaper Research Journal,
11:52-62 (Summer, 1990).
[4] Ibid., p. 59.
[5] Clint C. Wilson and Felix Gutierrez, Minorities and Media: Diversity and the
End of Mass Communication (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1985).
[6] Jonathan Eig, "Eyewitness," Dallas Life magazine, Feb. 27, 1994, p. 4.
[7] Jim Schutze, The Accommodation (Secausus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1986).
[8] Dallas Morning News, Feb. 9, 1950, p. 1.
[9] Dallas Express, Feb. 18, 1950, p. 1.
[10] Dallas Morning News, Feb. 10, 1950, Part 3, p. 1.
[11] Schutze, op. cit., p. 13.
[12] Dallas Morning News, Feb. 11, 1950, p. 1.
[13] Ibid., Feb. 11, 1950, p. 1.
[14] Ibid., March 7, 1950, Part 3, p. 3.
[15] Dallas Express, March 11, 1950, p. 1.
[16] Ibid., March 11, 1950, p. 1.
[17] Ibid., March 11, 1950, p. 1.
[18] Ibid., March 11, 1950, p. 1.
[19] Ibid., March 11, 1950, p. 1.
[20] Ibid., March 11, 1950, p. 1.
[21] Ibid., March 11, 1950, p. 1.
[22] Dallas Morning News, April 4, 1950, p. 1.
[23] Ibid., April 4, 1950, p. 1.
[24] Ibid., April 5, 1950, Part 3, p. 2.
[25] Dallas Express, April 8, 1950, p. 1.
[26] Dallas Morning News, May 9, 1950, p. 1.
[27] Dallas Express, May 13, 1950, p. 1.
[28] Dallas Morning News, May 11, 1950, Part 3, p. 1.
[29] Ibid., May 11, Part 3, p. 1.
[30] Ibid., May 12, 1950, p. 2.
[31] Ibid., May 12, 1950, p. 2.
[32] Ibid., May 12, 1950, p. 2.
[33] Dallas Express, May 27, 1950, p. 1.
[34] Ibid., May 20, 1950, p. 1.
[35] Ibid., June 19, 1950, p. 1.
[36] Dallas Morning News, June 5, 1950, Part 3, p. 1.
[37] Ibid., June 6, 1950, Part 3, p. 1.
[38] Ibid., June 7, 1950, p. 1.
[39] Ibid., June 7, 1950, p. 1.
[40] Dallas Express, June 10, 1950, p. 1.
[41] Ibid., June 10, 1950, p. 1.
[42] Dallas Morning News, July 9, 1950, p. 1.
[43] Ibid., July 10, 1950, Part 2, p. 2.
[44] Ibid., July 10, 1950, Part 2, p. 2.
[45] Dallas Express, July 15, 1950, p. 1.
[46] Dallas Morning News, Aug. 6, 1950, p. 1.
[47] Schutze, op. cit., p. 21.
[48] Dallas Express, March 18, 1950, p. 19.
[49] Dallas Morning News, April 10, 1950, Part 3, p. 2.
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