Friday, Aug. 27, 2010 4:58am
Ax Handle Saturday: The day we let you down
By Mark Woods
13 comments »
Latest by MarkNFL12345 1 year 1 day ago
Details of what had happened in downtown Jacksonville made the network newscasts.
A photo of a black teenager, his shirt spattered with blood after he was beaten, appeared in Life magazine.
Readers of newspapers in Chicago, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami and New York quickly learned about the event that became known as Ax Handle Saturday.
Or at least they learned more than readers of The Florida Times-Union.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of an ignoble day not only in the history of this city but in the history of this newspaper.
I’ve often heard stories about how the Times-Union covered the events of that summer. Or didn’t cover them.
I’ve heard that when black teenagers began sitting at whites-only lunch counters, the paper’s reporters were told not to cover the peaceful protests. And I’ve heard that when violence broke out just a few blocks from the Times-Union’s old building, photographers were told if they went to the scene they would lose their job.
“That’s true,” said Foster Marshall, a photographer who retired in 1994 after 40 years at the paper. “We were told by the executive editor not to cover it.”
The reasons they were given, he recalls, were safety and fear of losing equipment. Not that those in the newsroom necessarily bought the reasons. In the weeks leading up to Ax Handle Saturday, the paper’s approach to covering the sit-ins basically was ignore, ignore, ignore.
“It was national news, and all of us who were true journalists were really embarrassed,” said Bob McGinty, a copy editor and city editor. “We felt dirty as journalists because we couldn’t do our jobs.”
Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the microfilm from the days leading up to Ax Handle Saturday.
There was coverage of the “Reds” winning the race into space.
There was a full-page ad for a pro football exhibition between the Washington Redskins and Chicago Bears. “The publicity Jacksonville derives from the nation-wide televising of this game is invaluable ...” it said, imploring people to buy the tickets ($4 and $2).
There was a four-paragraph story, buried beneath the TV listings, saying that a federal judge in Birmingham, Ala., had ruled that the expulsion of six black students by Alabama State College was “justified and, in fact, necessary.”
There was almost no coverage of what was happening in downtown Jacksonville. Other than business as usual.
On the morning of Aug. 27, 1960, the local section of the T-U was topped by a photo of five smiling young women holding a sash. “Mrs. Downtowner finalists selected,” said the caption, explaining that each of the entrants appeared in bathing suits and gave a two-minute talk on “Why I like to Shop Downtown.”
When violence erupted downtown, Marshall recalls the reporters and photographers in the newsroom were itching to document what was happening. And although they were told not to, he recalls that a couple of his photographers went for lunch and just happened to end up at Woolworth’s. With their personal cameras.
Not that any photo appeared in the paper the next day. Or the next few decades.
The Jacksonville Journal, the evening paper, ran a front-page story with a banner headline the same day about the violence downtown. And although 50 years later you can certainly question the slant of the picture the Journal painted, at least it painted one.
The day after Ax Handle Saturday, the Times-Union ran a story in a corner of the local section, with a headline that said, “Tight Security Lid is Clamped on City After Racial Strife.” McGinty says this and other stories, which clearly placed the blame for that strife on the black teenagers, were intentionally “buried” in the paper. The executive editor mandated it, he said. And although McGinty remains proud of his time at the Times-Union, he says he and others from that era have long been embarrassed by that day’s paper.
“It was the most cowardly coverage I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.
And if he was frustrated, imagine the emotions a few floors below the paper’s main newsroom. This is where a small group of journalists put out the “black star” edition of the paper. Its masthead said, “News For and About the Colored People.” Not that any details of the sit-ins or Ax Handle Saturday made it into the “news for and about the colored people.”
“Nothing,” recalled Gertrude Peele this week. “We wanted to write about it. ... Even though colored people were involved, they [the paper’s management] didn’t feel it was newsworthy.”
There was one local paper which covered it quite thoroughly: The Florida Star.
Eric Simpson, the editor and publisher of the black newspaper, was inducted into the Florida Press Club Hall of Fame in 2003. Got a posthumous standing ovation at the ceremony. But in the 1960s, his coverage drew a different reaction.
He and his newspaper got frequent bomb threats.
One of his daughters, Phyllis Simpson, recalls her father and mother never would travel together, for fear their children would lose both parents.
She also recalls her dad loved his job, gathering the information, covering a story. And while you might think he would dwell on the ones he covered in the summer of 1960, his daughter says the opposite was true.
“He was a typical newsman,” she said. “He always was on to the next story.”
No comments:
Post a Comment