Dorothy Butler Gilliam

I was about to say that the headline across the top of this important book's front cover says it all: "A memoir by the first black woman reporter at the Washington Post. But, really, that bit of copy, while accurate, only tells part of the story. For while Gilliams was, indeed, when hired in 1961, the first black woman reporter at the Post, the role she has played and the work she has done to advance the cause of black representation both in American's newsrooms and on the pages of those publications, goes far beyond the role that the words "first black woman reporter" convey.

Gilliam's career spans the Civil Rights era of the late 50s and 60s through the Black Power movement and all the way through to the present day. She began her career as a typist for the black weekly, the Louisville Defender in the mid-50s but was soon editing and writing stories. In 1957 she was working for the Tri-State Defender when, at the age of 21, she went to Little Rock to cover the tumultuous, violent, hate-filled proceedings of the attempts to integrate the public schools there. She went to work for the The Washington Post, as mentioned, in 1961, and as a Post reporter went to Oxford, Mississippi, to cover the equally violent and ugly events around James Meredith's attempts to become the first black to enroll at the University of Mississippi. She spent several years as a beat reporter in Washington, retired for several years to raise her three daughters and support her husband's growing art career, and then returned to the Post as the editor of the newly expanded and influential Style section that covered a wide range of artistic and cultural issues in the city. And that's the short list of her accomplishments.

Surprisingly first quarter to third of the book, as Gilliam was telling the story of her early life and career, were a bit worrying and frustrating, as Gilliam was short on detail about her own actions and provides events in what seemed to me a disorganized manner. For example, she tells about the events in Oxford before describing the events of Little Rock, and in both cases spends much more time providing an historical overview of the events than in giving specific biographical details or personal memories. And even what's there can be frustrating. For example, as a very young reporter covering the Little Rock story, sitting around a private home with all of the black reporters who'd come to town (black reporters of course couldn't find hotel rooms in Little Rock) she says, "I soaked up the atmosphere and wisdom as they sat around the bar talking in the basement rec room. . . . Down in the Bateses' basement, I learned more about these newsmen as I listened, fascinated and horrified. As they talked about what had happened that day and about other civil rights struggles, they drank scotch and bourbon at the Bateses' bar." Reading that, I wanted to know details about the wisdom she soaked up. I wanted to know what she'd learned about the newsmen and their tales.

It's not that that part of the book is bereft of detail. The tale of driving through the night on a dark road with photographer Ernest Withers and being stopped by two whites in a truck and only escaping a serious incident because Withers, a veteran of such situations, knew how to talk his way out of that sort of trouble, was harrowing in and of itself. And Gilliam's description of the frustrations and humiliations of her early days in Washington, DC, were effective as well, as she spoke of her problems getting back to the newspaper after covering stories in time to make her deadlines because most DC cab drivers would not pick up black riders, and the newsroom colleagues who would be cordial at work but would refuse to acknowledge her greeting if they met in the street. Still, there is a lot left out of that part of her memoir, such as details about specific stories she covered and what she learned from them.

From there Gilliam takes us on a journey through her personal life, up through and including her 20-year marriage to Sam Gilliam, whose career as an abstract artist takes off and gives them both an opportunity to travel and meet influential people across many fields. The pressures of their dual careers, and Sam's bouts of depression, eventually led the couple to divorce, but Gilliam describes the love and support that she got from her husband in detail, as well. Even during her time away from the paper, while family was her primary focus, Gilliam stayed busy with freelance writing and some TV work.

In 1979, Gilliam returned to the Post and took an editing position at the Style section which allowed her to assign stories covering a wide range of social and cultural issues in Washington. It is at this point that this memoir really takes off. Gilliam describes for us with great power and passion the ways she fought to include stories about the large black DC population (DC actually had a black majority) in all its many facets. Covering the issues of African Americans was something white editors and newspaper owners thought was a losing strategy, and hiring minority reporters was something they basically never considered, but with the advent of the Black Power movement, and a rise in African American influence in the arts and across the board culturally, these factors began to change.

Gilliam, as editor of the Style section and then as an influential columnist for many years, and as a founding member of the Institute for Journalism Education and the National Association for Black Journalists fought hard for decades to nurture diverse journalistic talent and to help push open doors for them in media outlets nationally. Gilliam describes the famed Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee as generally sympathetic to this cause, but cautious and slow off the mark unless pushed. Eventually however, the Post came around and gave Gilliam and the organizations she championed quite a lot of support. Sadly, Gilliam reports at the end of the book that progress is still slow, and the staffs of the country's newspapers and other news outlets are far from proportionally representative of America's black, Latinx and Native American populations.

So, wow, this might be the longest LT review I've ever written. There's just so much in this memoir, despite what I found to be it's somewhat uneven nature, that it was hard for me to summarize any more briefly. All in all, Gilliam is an extremely admirable person, a tough fighter, who is reporting a crucial story… (altro)

The author was a pioneer of African America journalists, serving as a reporter and columnist at the Washington Post and also, in her later career, in high positions with groups that recruited and encouraged students of color to join the profession. However, the book is dry and not very inspiring for the reader, sorry to say. Her start covering the civil rights movement lacks passion. Maybe more about her personal life (she was married to a renowned modern artist) might have helped. I heard her on NPR, and she's a fine speaker, but the memoir rarely came to life for me.… (altro)