The Race Beat or The War for Wealth

The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation

Author: Gene Roberts

This is the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities of racial segregation in the South — and the brutality used to enforce it.

It is the story of how the nation's press, after decades of ignoring the problem, came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the twentieth century.

Drawing on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews, veteran journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff go behind the headlines and datelines to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen — first black reporters, then liberal southern editors, then reporters and photographers from the national press and the broadcast media — revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings and propelled its citizens to act.

We watch the black press move bravely into the front row of the confrontation, only to be attacked and kept away from the action. Following the Supreme Court's 1954 decision striking down school segregation and the South's mobilization against it, we see a growing number of white reporters venture South to cover the Emmett Till murder trial, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the integration of the University of Alabama.

We witness some southern editors joining the call for massive resistance and working with segregationist organizations to thwart compliance. But we also see a handful of other southern editors write forcefully and daringly for obedience to federal mandates, signaling to the nation that moderateforces were prepared to push the region into the mainstream.

The pace quickens in Little Rock, where reporters test the boundaries of journalistic integrity, then gain momentum as they cover shuttered schools in Virginia, sit-ins in North Carolina, mob-led riots in Mississippi, Freedom Ride buses being set afire, fire hoses and dogs in Birmingham, and long, tense marches through the rural South.

For many journalists, the conditions they found, the fear they felt, and the violence they saw were transforming. Their growing disgust matched the mounting country-wide outrage as The New York Times, Newsweek, NBC News, and other major news organizations, many of them headed by southerners, turned a regional story into a national drama.

The New York Times - David J. Garrow

"At no other time in U.S. history were the news media more influential than they were in the 1950s and 1960s," argues The Race Beat, an important study of how journalists covered the civil rights movement. One might imagine that influence was all to the good, but Gene Roberts, a former managing editor at The New York Times, and Hank Klibanoff, a managing editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, describe here in richly instructive detail how, more often than not, the professional performance of both Southern newspapers and national beacons like The Times left much to be desired.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

The stories of these men -- and with the notable exception of Hazel Brannon Smith, who owned a few small-town papers in Mississippi and wrote bravely against the racist White Citizens' Council, they all were men -- may seem inside baseball for journalists, but they are essential to the history of the civil rights movement and thus of broad interest. The authors are well qualified for the task. Roberts, who now teaches at the University of Maryland, had a long and distinguished career during which he often reported from the civil rights front lines; so, too, did Klibanoff, now the managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who began his career working on three different small Mississippi papers. At times, their attention drifts away from the press and onto rehashes of familiar stories -- the murder of Emmett Till, the march in Selma, the mob violence at the University of Mississippi, the church bombing in Birmingham -- but these may be useful to younger readers for whom, alas, these events are ancient and perhaps unknown history.

Publishers Weekly

This Pulitzer-winning chronicle of the role the news media played in shaping the civil rights movement makes its belated audio debut. Richard Allen undertakes the vocal depictions of the players from across the race-relations spectrum with tremendous skill. He manages to portray characters instead of caricatures as the sweeping real-life drama unfolds. Given the length of the recording and the density of the material, listeners should find it particularly helpful that Allen repeats the last few sentences of the previous disc at the start of each new CD. The solid production follows the authors' straight-ahead narrative approach. Journalism students and history buffs with at least some grounding in both the conventions of the news business or the civil rights era are the natural core audience. Others may wish to familiarize themselves with more general resources before tackling such an ambitious offering. A Vintage paperback (Reviews, Nov. 9, 2006). (Jan.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Faced with "a flying wedge of white toughs coming at him" as he interviewed a black woman after the 1955 Emmett Till lynching trial, NBC reporter John Chancellor thrust his microphone toward them, saying, "I don't care what you're going to do to me, but the whole world is going to know it." This gripping account of how America and the world found out about the Civil Rights movement is written by two veteran journalists of the "race beat" from 1954 to 1965. Building on an exhaustive base of interviews, oral histories and memoirs, news stories and editorials, they reveal how prescient Gunnar Myrdal was in asserting that "to get publicity is of the highest strategic importance to the Negro people." The New York Times and other major media take center stage, but the authors provide a fresh account of the black press's trajectory from a time when black reporters searched "for stories white reporters didn't even know about" through the loss of the black press's "eyewitness position on the story" in Little Rock to its recovery with the Freedom Rides. Although sometimes weighted by mundane detail and deadening statistics, the book is so enlivened with anecdotes that it remains a page-turner. (Nov. 21) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Gloria Maxwell - Library Journal

In the late 1930s, the Carnegie Foundation commissioned Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to conduct a study of race relations in America. The result was the seminal 1500-page An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, published in 1944. Myrdal exposed the unfair treatment of Negro people, particularly in the South. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, coverage of Southern race issues fell almost solely to the black press. They reported on Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and other atrocities aimed at Southern blacks. As America participated in World Wars I and II, Southern blacks began to question why they were risking their lives to fight against prejudice, genocide, and discrimination in foreign countries while their own country refused to give them equality. In their 2006 hardcover, veteran journalists Roberts and Klibanoff draw on oral histories, memoirs, extensive interviews, and editorials to tell the story of dedicated black journalists who braved danger to bring stories to print, and they relate how the Northern press corps was finally drawn into covering the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. With a timbre close to that of James Earl Jones, Richard Allen brings authority and authenticity to his reading of this audio version. Some of the accounts are shocking to hear but are undeniable testimony to actual events. Incredibly detailed, sometimes to the point of overkill, this is undeniably a significant addition to civil rights history. Absolutely essential for all audio collections.

Library Journal

Reporters who covered the "race beat" during the volatile desegregation of the South put their principles and often their lives on the line to ensure that the Civil Rights Movement became imbedded in the American conscience. Distinguished authors Roberts (former managing editor, New York Times) and Klibanoff (managing editor of news, Atlanta Journal-Constitution) have written a sweeping, often engrossing narrative of the role that print and broadcast reporters played in the movement. Beginning with Gunnar Myrdal's indictment of Southern racial intolerance, An American Dilemma (1944), the authors describe how the white and black presses sought out and presented the stories that enthralled and divided America, from Emmett Till's murder in 1955 to "Bloody Sunday" at Selma ten years later. The white press replaced the black press as the source of timely civil rights news because Southern political leaders and murderous pro-segregation thugs more often prevented black reporters from covering events. In addition to providing exciting stories of times that have been well chronicled by Taylor Branch, most recently in At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, the authors present fascinating accounts of editors and reporters-famous and little known, black and white, liberal and reactionary-who, in the words of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), "changed this nation once and for all." Strongly recommended for larger public libraries and for academic libraries that support journalism programs. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/06.]-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Book review: Desafío de Colaboración:Como No ganancias y Negocios Tienen éxito Por Alianzas Estratégicas

The War for Wealth: Why Globalization is Bleeding the West of Its Prosperity

Author: Gabor Steingart

A rallying cry to renew the position of the West in the global economy

If globalization's cheerleaders are right and the world is indeed flat, then it's tilted heavily toward the East. In this provocative look at globalization and its discontents, agenda-setting journalist Gabor Steingart challenges the cadre of well-known globalization supporters-from Thomas Friedman and other media personalities to economists to the politicians that are enabling this transfer of jobs and wealth-to show how the same free-trade policies that are responsible for the Asian economic miracle are destroying the West's way of life and standard of living.

Using numerous examples, The War for Wealth demonstrates how China and other Asian powerhouses have turned the sources of our economic might against us, and shows how we will continue to lose wealth and prosperity if we continue down the current path. To resolve these issues, Steingart makes a strong case for controversial fixes, such as a NATO-like trans-Atlantic trade agreement and a rethinking of our most basic trade policies.

Lawrence R. Maxted - Library Journal

Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat synthesized academic work on globalization into a book for everyone. Now Steingart (Washington, DC, correspondent, Der Spiegel) examines the dark side of globalization for a similarly broad audience. Forcefully, he hammers home his thesis that globalization comes with many negatives and dangers. He warns that nations like India and China are aggressively setting the stage for a redistribution of wealth from the West to Asia. He explains that they and other Asian nations have gradually come to dominate first manufacturing and then services and will soon dominate research and development. He says that U.S. and European jobs lost to Asia are not being replaced with comparable ones: workers in general are losing their economic power as Asian businesses exploit their own glut of low-cost, easily controlled labor. Steingart cautions that in addition to economic strength, these Asian nations are building up their military might not unlike the European powers did before World War I. Ultimately, he provides a glimmer of hope with suggestions for how the West can regain its economic vitality. His cautionary work is deeply thoughtful, accessible to all, and highly recommended for all libraries. [This edition has additional material not in the original German one.-Ed.]

Table of Contents:

Ch. 1 Rethinking globalization : a question of survival 1

Ch. 2 Europe over all : the dress rehearsal for globalization 23

Ch. 3 The American century : a final appraisal 49

Ch. 4 New rivals : the Asian challenge 91

Ch. 5 The flat world is broken 127

Ch. 6 Aggressive Asia : a threat to world peace? 203

Ch. 7 The United States of the West : it's a journey, not a destination 223

Interview with Nobel Prize winner Paul A. Samuelson : "The market has no brain" 261

Acknowledgments 275

Sources 279

Index 289