The Race Beat Summary
The Race Beat: the Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff tells the story of the role and influence of the media in covering the black civil rights from its beginnings to 1965. Essentially, as their subtitle suggests, the authors make a convincing argument that that national (white) media’s coverage of the Southern struggle was essential to the passage of the landmark legislation of 1964 and 1965 (that’s the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act for those keeping score at home).
The book begins with a summary of the work of now infamous sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, a Swede studying race in the South for the Carnegie Foundation in 1940s. In An America Dilemma, which was effectively …show more content…
Myrdal argued that once attention was focused on racial issues in the South, the tide would inevitably have to turn in favor of equal rights for Negroes, something they weren’t getting in 1944.
Roberts and Klibanoff tell that story. The story of how White northerners learned better, how they learned of the ugly reality of the Southern system. They begin with the lead up and aftermath of the landmark Brown v. Board decision. Telling how, slowly, efforts to integrate southern school both garnered more support within the black South, more opposition from segregationist whites, and garnered more attention from outside observers.
The book covers the gambit, from segregationist local papers, large bodies like the Times, Newsweek and NBC, and smaller struggling black newspapers and their reporters. Though their focus is undeniably on the papers and reporters covering the race beat, Roberts and Klibanoff manage to tell the story of the early successes and struggles of civil rights organizers as
The book begins with a summary of the work of now infamous sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, a Swede studying race in the South for the Carnegie Foundation in 1940s. In An America Dilemma, which was effectively …show more content…
Myrdal argued that once attention was focused on racial issues in the South, the tide would inevitably have to turn in favor of equal rights for Negroes, something they weren’t getting in 1944.
Roberts and Klibanoff tell that story. The story of how White northerners learned better, how they learned of the ugly reality of the Southern system. They begin with the lead up and aftermath of the landmark Brown v. Board decision. Telling how, slowly, efforts to integrate southern school both garnered more support within the black South, more opposition from segregationist whites, and garnered more attention from outside observers.
The book covers the gambit, from segregationist local papers, large bodies like the Times, Newsweek and NBC, and smaller struggling black newspapers and their reporters. Though their focus is undeniably on the papers and reporters covering the race beat, Roberts and Klibanoff manage to tell the story of the early successes and struggles of civil rights organizers as