The Beginning to an End
1963: A Year of Change
In the summer of 1963 a pivotal event occurred that did not only affect the state of Alabama, but the entire nation. |
| George C. Wallace presidential campaign pin, 1968. |
George
C. Wallace, governor of Alabama in 1963, was well known for his political power
and objective to “stand up for America.” Wallace expressed just how far he
would go to reach his goal on June 11, 1963.
Vivian Malone and James Hood, two capable students, visited
the University of Alabama that summer in hopes of enrolling for classes. Both students
were fit candidates to be admitted into the university, except they were
African American. As the students marched up to the Alabama schoolhouse door,
Wallace blocked their entrance.
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George C. Wallace standing at
the entrance of the University
of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Photo by AP Images, June 11,
1963
|
“It is this right which I assert for the people of Alabama by my
presence here today,” Wallace said as he stood at the entrance of the
University of Alabama on June 11, 1963.
Wallace’s actions and his “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”
speech went down in history and forever changed the United States.
The event went viral in newsrooms across the nation
when President John F. Kennedy wrote an executive order directed at Wallace.
“That order called for the admission of two clearly
qualified young Alabama residents,” Kennedy stated in his speech on June 11, 1963, “who
happened to have been born Negro.”
Journalists knew the event would not just affect Alabama but
the United States as a whole.
Coverage Across the Nation
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National Guard Brig. Gen. Henry
Graham addressing Gov.
George C. Wallace at the University of Alabama in
Tuscaloosa.
Photo by AP Images June 11, 1963
|
The New York Times and The Dallas Morning News are just two
of the major publications that covered the story on June 11, 1963. Although the
stories contain similar facts they were presented in very different ways.
The Dallas Morning News front-page headline read, “Moment of
Decision Nears for Wallace,” and presented an image of Wallace with government
officials.
The New York Times (NYT) presented the story regarding
Wallace and the University of Alabama in a different light.
The headline read, “President Urges Wallace to Shun Alabama
Campus,” but did not add a photo. Instead NYT focused on Kennedy’s comments
regarding the Cold War.
The Dallas Morning News approached the story emphasizing
Wallace’s role rather than Kennedy’s. The front-page story is not continued
throughout the newspaper, although The Dallas Morning News does write a second
story found on its the front-page titled, “ ‘Stay Away’ J.F.K Asks.”
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President John Kennedy broadcasting his nation-wide
speech on
civil rights in the White House.
Photo by AP Images June 11, 1963
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“‘Stay Away’ J.F.K Asks” focuses on Kennedy’s telegram sent
to Wallace days before the event occurred.
“I, therefore, urgently ask you to consider the consequences
to your state and its fine university if you persist in setting an example of
defiant conduct,” Kennedy said.
The NYT story took a different spin and described how the
nation would be affected instead of describing the consequences Wallace and University
of Alabama would face.
“The civil rights proposals are expected to include
a ban on discrimination by stores, restaurants, theatres and other businesses
dealing in interstate commerce,” said the NYT on June 11, 1963, Page 4.
Finding Common Ground
The disparities in coverage between the New York Times and
The Dallas Morning News could be because of the proximity of Tuscaloosa, Alabama
as well as the different political views found in the two states. Regardless of
the differences the story was seen as an important event nationwide.
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Vivian Malone and James
Hood answering
questions during a news
conference after registering for their classes at the
University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Photo by AP Images June 11,
1963
|
"[The Nation] was founded on
the principle that all men are created equal,” Kennedy said, quoting the U.S.
Constitution during his June 11, 1963, speech regarding the event that took
place at the University of Alabama, “and that the rights of every man are
diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
Danielle
Harkness is a junior at Texas State University majoring in journalism and
Spanish.
Civil rights sees 50th anniversary of tragedies and triumphs
By: Michael C.
Seabrooke
October 3, 2013
My goal for this assignment was to compare how local Alabama
papers covered civil rights news in their time - 1963 for the 50th
anniversary this year - with their northern neighbor, the New York Times, in a
search for which area gives more attention to black events.
Emphasis in this project was placed on the following 1963
events: the murder of Medgar Evers (head of NAACP), 6/12/63; Martin Luther
King, Jr.’s March
on Washington, 8/28/63; possible inclusions of MLK’s arrest in Birmingham,
Alab. earlier that year on 4/16/63.
Lastly, I found a surprise while hunting for information in the New York
Times for Malcom X’s two-hour speech at the Unity Rally
in Harlem, 6/29/63. The library archives
at Texas State University, understandably, do not keep newspapers from other
states like Alabama and Mississippi, so I placed my emphasis on the New York
Times. The following is an analysis of
my findings.
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| Front page, New York Times, 6/13/1963 |
The Thursday, June 13th, 1963 issue of the New
York Times hosted news on the assassination of Medgar Evers. Evers was shot in the back with a high
powered rifle while walking from his car to his home in Jackson, Mississippi on
June 12th. A suspect was
picked up in a matter of hours, questioned, and released. The NYT did not feel this was any more
newsworthy than the cold war brewing with Russia, or the Profumo inquiry in
London. All three major stories shared
near equal space on the top of A1 in the NYT that day. The Medgar Evers article did not even receive
a photo. I am hoping this was because
the publication was run on short notice, when no photos were readily available
for the murder across the country. Evers
was shot around 11pm on June 12th, and died in the hospital at 1am
June 13th, just hours before the article ran in the Times.
 |
| Medgar Evers, state secretary for NAACP, Aug. 9, 1955 in Jackson, Miss. (APimages.com) |
Monday, July 29th, 1963 showed A1 coverage of the
blacks picketing the mayor’s office in NYC and being arrested. Even this local headline was still not
important enough to receive photographic coverage. Instead, the much happier news of Jackie O’s
birthday and Caroline Kennedy jumping from her father’s private yacht in Hyannis
Port, Mass. received a large photo on the front page, with the news of black
picketers off to the side, almost sandwiched between the personal Kennedy
story, and news of the President sending a message to Kruschev.
Perhaps the decision to include photos on the civil rights
subject wasth,
1963 issue was filled with a large image of volunteers packing 80,000 lunches
for the marchers a day earlier. ‘CAPITAL
IS READY FOR MARCH TODAY; 100,000 EXPECTED’ read the headline. They were close on that estimate! Just multiply by two…
purely numbers based.
Apparently 200,000 participants is enough to gain photographic attention
on the front page of the Times, because the Wednesday, August 28
6,000 police were assigned to the event, and liquor stores
were banned from selling alcohol in the area that day. Page 21 of the same NYT issue covered the
march route with a map of D.C., and coverage of the starting location at the
Washington Monument. Elsewhere in the
south, this large an event would have been a disaster. Fortunately no angry rioters or protestors
disturbed the mass of people, and the event is long remembered as having been a
truly peaceful union of citizens seeking racial equity.
The Times redeemed itself on August 29th, 1963,
with two gigantic pictures showing as many of the 200,000 participants as the
camera could absorb in one frame; one shot was from the Washington Monument,
the other taken from atop the Lincoln Memorial.
The headline read ‘200,000 MARCH FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN ORDERLY WASHINGTON
RALLY; PRESIDENT SEES GAIN FOR NEGRO’.
Martin Luther King Jr. shot to death in Memphis hotel
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| Front page, New York Times, 6/29/1963 |
The lede read: “More than 200,000 Americans, most of them
black but many of them white, demonstrated here today for a full and speedy
program of civil rights and equal job opportunities. It was the greatest assembly for a redress of
grievances that this capital has ever seen.”
My only true disappointment (and half my reason for using
the Times for this assignment) was in seeking their coverage of the Unity Rally in Harlem on
June 29th, 1963. I scoured
the Times on microfilm from June 28th-30th and found no
coverage of the event. Since this took a
good deal of time to locate (unsuccessfully), I pulled up the actual speech and
listened to the first fifteen minutes with headphones while I worked.
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| Photo credit: www.blackyouthproject.com |
Malcom was an amazing public speaker and motivator with some
very unique views on the subject of integration, but his Unity Rally speech, two
hours long in Mecca
in April 1964, where he saw Muslims of all colors and races sharing a common
purpose, and realized Islam could be his vessel for working through racial
controversy back home. Despite the
unflattering words against whites at the Unity Rally, it was surprising the
Times chose not cover the second largest racial protest on record that
transpired in their own backyard.
total, did not speak well of his fellow white citizens. Malcom’s view of whites in society did not
evolve until his trip to
Links showing present-day tributes to the Anniversary:
Michael Seabrooke is a senior at Texas State University,
majoring in journalism. He lives in Austin, TX and can be reached
at: mcs104@txstate.edu.
Martin Luther King Jr. shot to death in Memphis hotel
Civil
rights leader gone but not forgotten
1964 marked the start of a
monumental few years for the United States. The beginning of the Civil Rights
Movement brought forward thousands of courageous black men and women who
fought, sometimes to death, for their own freedom and equal rights. One of
those brave people was Martin Luther King Jr. who, to this day, is still known
for his nonviolent role in the advancement of the Civil Rights movement. Back in the day, Martin Luther King Jr. was
no stranger to the newspaper headlines and TV and radio newscasts. Newspapers
from both the Northern and Southern part of the United States were well-versed
when it came to covering stories about Martin Luther King Jr.; but they chose
to do it in somewhat different ways. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.
was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis,
Tennessee. The headlines the day following King’s death was as predicted: all
about the assassination and who did it. |
|
Martin Luther King stands with Hosea Williams,
Jesse Jackson and Ralph
Abernathy on the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel on April 3, 1968, a day before
he was assassinated at approximately the same place.
Associated Press
|
The New York Times, obviously a Northern paper, chose to cover King’s
untimely death in a seemingly distant manner. The front page on Friday, April
5, 1968 read: “MARTIN LUTHER KING IS SLAIN IN MEMPHIS; A WHITE IS SUSPECTED;
JOHNSON URGES CALM.” Although the all caps headline does convey a message of
urgency, there is something about the way “SLAIN” is used, and also the way
they chose to include “A WHITE IS SUSPECTED” that could lead an audience to
believe that it wasn’t as big of a deal as others may have made it seem.
“Slain” is a very graphic word, and even though the meaning behind it is true and
does
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Andrew Young, Civil rights leader, and others on the
balcony
of the Memphis hotel, point in the direction
where gunshots came from after the
assassination
of Martin Luther King Jr. Associated
Press
|
to how the word
“slain” was used in The New York Times’ headline, there is no responsibility
behind who committed this awful crime. The headline for The Dallas Morning News
doesn’t look any different than any other day, even though it should. The
layout is the same as if it were just another typical day with no breaking news
to share; the picture shown of King is small and doesn’t do him any justice at
all. This man deserved to have his story told and it is almost offensive that
this newspaper didn’t make it a bigger deal on their headline.
Nicolle Beltz is a senior at Texas State University majoring in journalism.
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