Bill Minor's legacy
Can one journalist make a difference?
A documentary makes the case for one
reporter, whose work from Mississippi may have proven more influential than
any other during the height of the civil rights movement. And much of that
work carried no byline.
“Bill Minor took risks to tell the
story of what was happening in Mississippi,’’ Myrlie Evers, wife of slain
civil rights leader Medgar Evers, says in the documentary. “But he also did
something else. He gave us hope for a brighter future.”
Former New York Times journalist
Claude Sitton called Minor a “first warning system” during the civil rights
era, and Dr. Robert Smith, a veteran civil rights activist, said “the black
community essentially had no access to the major press except through Bill.”
The 56-minute documentary is entitled
“Eyes on
Mississippi,” the name of the weekly column Minor wrote. Minor, a
lifelong Catholic, World War II vet and son of a Louisiana linotype operator,
began reporting from Mississippi for the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1947,
later also working as an un-bylined “stringer” for the Times and Newsweek. He
never left Mississippi, and kept writing his column nearly until his death in
March 2017.
Director
Ellen Ann Fentress, who had 40 hours of footage with Minor, shows the stories
that tore at him — the circus-like atmosphere at the electrocution of a black
man in Laurel, Mississippi; the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till; the riots
and U.S. military intervention in the state to enroll a black student at
the University of Mississippi; the swift police arrest of nine black college
students for the “crime” of asking to borrow a book from the
white public library in Jackson.
Also: The assassination of the
NAACP’s Evers, a regular source, in the driveway of his Jackson home in June
1963. Also: The slaying of three civil rights workers in eastern Mississippi
and the trial for those killings.
Minor covered that trial, in which a
Mississippi court, for the first time, convicted white men for the killing of
a black man, James Chaney. In fact, the judge asked Minor right before the
trial if he knew any of the jurors, and the next day appointed Minor’s
acquaintance as jury foreman. That move, Minor learned later, played a big
role in the convictions.
“It’s hard to imagine today what a
reign of terror existed in this state,” Minor says in one interview. It was a
long effort to tell the truth that many local outlets, including the Jackson
newspapers, had hidden about federal civil rights changes. “It makes you feel
like you were put here for a reason,” Minor tells Fentress.
Former Gov. William Winter tells
Fentress that Minor was about the only Mississippi journalist who was
preparing state residents for the future, telling them they could not put
their heads in the sand and imagine that Brown vs. Board of Education or the
Voting Rights Act hadn’t occurred. Minor, who saw himself as a champion of
the ordinary person, endured the ire of segregationists for decades
afterward, as well as threats and a Klansman’s brick through his office
window.
He could have worked anywhere, but
Minor chose to stay in Mississippi, saying once, "I wanted to see how
the story ended." So does Fentress, a native of Greenwood, Mississippi,
who worked for Minor at the start of her journalistic career and now is the
Times stringer in the state.
Did Minor make a difference? The New
York Times called him the “conscience
of Mississippi” in its obituary. Sitton said “no Southern newspaperman
has done more for civil rights and civil liberties.” Fentress called Minor
“the most essential reporter the nation has never heard of.”
That may be true, at least until the
release of a broadcast version of her documentary
later this year. Can’t wait to see it? Contact
Fentress, who has has been showing an early version of the documentary to
universities and other venues.
IRE Awards showcase accountability reporting
An award favorite and an
international independent investigative unit took the two top prizes from the
Investigative Reporters & Editors on Monday.
The New York Times reporting
on Harvey Weinstein and sexual harassment on factory floors helped forge
the #MeToo movement, and its work won both an IRE public service award and a
prize for top print/online entry among big outlets. The package also had won
an American Society of Newspaper Editors award last week.
Judges gave a public service and
video/broadcast award to Bellingcat
for “Killing Pavel,” a 49-minute documentary that uncovered
new details in the 2016 car-bomb slaying of Ukrainian journalist Pavel
Sheremet. Of the project, judges wrote: “Nothing could be more in the spirit
of the IRE.”
CCTV footage of the two people
believed to have planted the car-bomb. (Screengrab)
Among other winners:
·
"From
Russia With Blood," by BuzzFeed News: Even before the nerve-gas
poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter last month in Great
Britain, there were a series of suspicious “suicides” in Britain and
Washington that involved two Russian turncoats and three English citizens.
The outlet’s investigation prompted authorities to reopen an inquiry and look
more closely at Moscow’s role in the deaths.
·
"Deadly
Decisions," Malheur Enterprise: This Oregon weekly newspaper fought
a state agency that wanted to block documents in the killing of two people by
a longtime ward of the state. It launched a GoFundMe drive to raise money for
a lawyer to defend the journalist from a state lawsuit. The governor stepped
in to support the paper and public records. “This work,” the judges wrote,
“is proof that you don’t need a large staff and deep resources to move the
needle on open records.”
·
"They
Got Hurt at Work, Then They Got Deported," NPR and ProPublica: They
were legally entitled to workers' compensation benefits, but insurance
companies and Florida employers targeted these injured workers for denial of
benefits and even deportation.
·
"The Pope's
Long Con," The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting: State
Rep. Danny Ray Johnson, a pastor who referred to himself as the pope of his
flock, had a secret history: fraud and self-enrichment, including perjury and
an insurance scam, and the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl. Within
hours, lawmakers called for Johnson’s resignation. Tragically, Johnson took
his life days later.
Here is the
full list of winners, including the Seattle Times, The Lens in New
Orleans, WSMV-Nashville, WVUE-New Orleans, the San Francisco Chronicle and
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The awards come
two weeks before journalism’s most established awards, the Pulitzer Prizes,
out April 16.
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