Robinson: Black reporter of civil rights era an inspiration

If Simeon Booker could brave lynch mobs, today’s reporters can withstand Trump’s tweets.

By Eugene Robinson

The great Simeon Booker, one of the bravest journalists of our time, faced dangers far worse than a petulant president’s social media feed. Booker refused to be cowed — and ultimately helped change the nation. His life’s work should be a lesson to us all about the power of truth to vanquish evil.

Booker died Sunday at 99. At the height of his career, few could have imagined he would live so long.

As Washington bureau chief for the Chicago-based Johnson Publications, publisher of the newsweekly Jet and the monthly magazine Ebony, Booker went to the Deep South to cover the most tumultuous events of the civil rights movement — life-threatening work for an African-American journalist.

In 1961, he accompanied the Freedom Riders on a bus journey from Washington to New Orleans, testing whether Southern states would comply with a federal mandate against segregated interstate travel. In Alabama, the protesters were firebombed once and beaten twice by white mobs before federal officials, acting on orders from attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, flew them to safety.

Booker covered the seminal 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. He was there when Alabama state troopers savagely attacked demonstrators with billy clubs and police dogs — images that shocked the nation and helped shift public opinion outside of the South from indifference to outrage.

As The Washington Post reported in its obituary, Booker returned many times to the South to report on the struggle: “For his safety, he sometimes posed as a minister, carrying a Bible under his arm. Other times, he discarded his usual suit and bow tie for overalls to look the part of a sharecropper. Once, in an incident retold when Mr. Booker was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame in 2013, he escaped a mob by riding in the back of a hearse.”

Booker was the Post’s first full-time black reporter, hired by publisher Philip Graham, who gave him an admonition similar to the one Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey had given to Jackie Robinson: “If you can take it, I’m willing to gamble.” Washington was a segregated city in 1952 — Booker recalled that when he went out to cover a robbery, “they thought I was one of the damn holdup men” — and ultimately he found the work unsatisfying. In 1954, Johnson Publications offered him the bureau chief job, and he took it. He kept it for five decades.

Booker is best known for the story he wrote for Jet about Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager brutally slain in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. In Chicago at the time, Booker tracked down Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and was with her when Till’s mutilated body arrived.

Booker wrote: “Her face wet with tears, she leaned over the body, just removed from a rubber bag in a Chicago funeral home, and cried out, ‘Darling, you have not died in vain. Your life has been sacrificed for something.’”

Jet photographer David Jackson took photographs of Till’s brutalized body that remain among the most searing and indelible images of the century.

Booker’s death comes at a moment when journalism and the civic necessity it seeks to provide — truth — are under assault. President Trump and his amen chorus are cynically trying to delegitimize news organizations whose work they find inconvenient. They seek to deny the existence of objective, ascertainable fact. Trump goes so far as to use his Twitter feed, with its millions of followers, to attack individual reporters and demand they be fired.

Journalism’s response must be to tell the president — politely, with all due respect to the office — to stuff it.

There are facts. There is truth. We try our best to get everything right, but of course we sometimes make errors. When we do, we must correct them promptly and fully — and move on. The only “fake news” is the self-serving rubbish Trump tries to peddle through insistent repetition. No matter how often he lies, it is our job to call him on his lying. Every single time.

One of the media’s most important roles in our democracy is to hold public officials accountable, and if they don’t like it, too bad. When they lash out at us viciously and unfairly, as Trump so often does, we should remember all the brave journalists who have faced much worse.

More than once, Simeon Booker had to escape from Southern towns where white vigilante mobs were on the prowl to “get that man from Jet.” We should be able to withstand a few nasty tweets.

Eugene Robinson’s email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Opinion

RGB version
Editorial cartoons for Monday, March 18

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Carson gets a chance to sound the horn in an Everett Fire Department engine with the help of captain Jason Brock during a surprise Make-A-Wish sendoff Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023, at Thornton A. Sullivan Park in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Editorial: Everett voters will set course for city finances

This fall and in coming years, they will be asked how to fund and support the services they use.

Devotees of TikTok, Mona Swain, center, and her sister, Rachel Swain, right, both of Atlanta, monitor voting at the Capitol in Washington, as the House passed a bill that would lead to a nationwide ban of the popular video app if its China-based owner doesn't sell, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Lawmakers contend the app's owner, ByteDance, is beholden to the Chinese government, which could demand access to the data of TikTok's consumers in the U.S. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Editorial: Forced sale of TikTok ignores network of problems

The removal of a Chinese company would still leave concerns for data privacy and the content on apps.

Rep. Strom Peterson, D-Edmonds, watches the State of the State speech by Gov. Jay Inslee on the second day of the legislative session at the Washington state Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Editorial: Legislature has its own production of ‘The Holdovers’

What state lawmakers left behind in good ideas that should get more attention and passage next year.

Comment: Measles outbreaks show importance of MMR vaccinations

The highly contagious disease requires a 95 percent vaccination rate to limit the spread of outbreaks.

Harrop: Should ‘affordable’ come at cost of quality of living?

As states push their cities to ignore zoning rules, the YIMBYs are covering for developers.

Saunders: Classified document cases show degrees of guilt

President Biden’s age might protect him, but the special prosecutor didn’t exonerate him either.

Comment: Clearing the internet of misinformation, deep fakes

With social networks’ spotty moderation record, users need to identify and call out problems they see.

Eco-Nomics: Price of gas, fossil fuels higher than you think

Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels force unseen costs in climate disasters, illness and more.

Vote against I-2117 to keep best tool to protect climate

We voters will be offered the opportunity to repeal Washington state’s Climate… Continue reading

Lack of maternal health care raises risks of deadly sepsis

In today’s contentious climate, we often hear political debates about maternal health… Continue reading

Trump’s stance on abortion isn’t moderate; it’s dangerous

Voters deserve to know the facts and the truth about what will… Continue reading

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.