No to Black Vets

Hodding Carter took on the bigots and racists in his small town newspaper, the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Miss. When white townspeople objected to listing black veterans on the town's World War II honor roll, he wrote an editorial, "Our Honor Roll Is a Monument to Intolerance and Timidity." It and others he wrote won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize.

When the White Citizens' Councils resisted the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision, Carter spoke out against them. In response to his criticism, the Mississippi House of Representatives formally denounced Carter, whereupon Carter responded in an editorial:

By a vote of 89 to 19 the Mississippi House of Representatives has resolved the editor of this newspaper into a liar because of an article I wrote.... If this charge were true it would make me well qualified to serve with that body. It is not true. So... I herewith resolve by a vote of 1 to 0 that there are 89 liars in the State Legislature, beginning with Speaker Silvers and working way on down to Rep. Eck Windham of Prentiss, whose name is fittingly made up of the words 'wind' and 'ham.'... Meanwhile, those 89 character mobbers can go to hell collectively or singly and wait there until I back down. They needn't plan on returning.

Closed College Door

Ira Harkey, the editor and publisher of the small Pascagoula daily newspaper, spoke out when Ross Barnett, the governor of Mississippi, vowed to keep blacks out of the University of Mississippi "forever." Harkey condemned Barnett as a demagogue. The result: Gunshots, a cross ignited on his lawn, failing circulation and canceled advertising.

On Christmas 1962, Harkey wrote this in an editorial:

In Mississippi, a person who attempts to carry Christianity out the church door, who dares to practice the Christian virtue of tolerance outside the church, is cursed as a liberal, a leftist, a communist, a niggerlover. Christ was the greatest champion of the underdog the world has ever known. If He were to visit us here, now, by whose side would He stand, beside the brick-throwing, foulmouthed, destroying, profaning, slavering members of the mob and their "nice-folk" eggers-on, or beside the trembling victim of their hate?

A white woman who worked for the local library read the editorial and wrote Harkey: "Instead of a bullet through your door, I hope you get a bullet through your stupid head."

Activist journalists subscribe to Bentham's moral injunction to refuse to stay silent in the face of wrongs and wrongdoing. They must speak up when injustice exists, whatever the majority opinion in the community, however much those in power prefer to keep things as is.

Current Examples

Racial discrimination continues to be a concern of the activist press. Some recent newspaper campaigns include:

• The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va.: A two-year study revealed racial disparity in sentencing local criminal defendants.
• Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire, Wis.: A staff project exposed racial discrimination in housing rentals.
• The Dallas Morning News: Reporters showed how a development plan would crowd thousands more blacks into one of the city's poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods.