Reed W. Smith

Sports Illustrated's African American Athlete Series as Socially Responsible Journalism

Abstract In July 1968, Sports Illustrated magazine published a series of articles titled “The Black Athlete: A Shameful Story,” that ran for five consecutive weeks. Up until that year, and contrary to popular opinion and mainstream journalistic accounts, collegiate and professional athletic teams had discriminated against African Americans. SIs series was the first to appear in a national periodical that comprehensively investigated and “indicted” the American sports establishment for its treatment of African Americans. The series was the first controversial investigative analysis of a social sports topic that SI had undertaken during its history, and it was printed despite opposition from its own upper management team. This research investigates the findings of the series as well as the resulting reader feedback that exceeded any SI has received on an article(s) it has published. It argues that the series played a role in bringing the civil rights movement to the locker room by raising public awareness. As a result, the series represented a significant development in the advancement of socially responsible sports journalism.

Southern Journalists and Lynching: The Statesboro Case Study

Historians who have studied the rampant lynching era in the Southern United States that spanned the years between the 1880s and the 1930s have speculated that newspapers actually encouraged the atrocities. This study examines the coverage of one of the more infamous lynchings of this era to determine if such conjecture holds up under closer scrutiny. In 1904, a white mob burned two black men at the stake in Statesboro, Georgia, for allegedly murdering a white family. While some of the previous assessments of journalistic activity are confirmed, this examination reveals that the relationship between journalists and those who participated in lynchings was more complex than previously depicted. It appears there was an active debate taking place among Georgia editors and readers concerning not only the efficacy of lynchings, but also the role newspapers were playing in the deadly activity.

Oral History Project An Interview with James Startt

Startt: History has been my career. It is a subject that has always fascinated me. Since high school I have wanted to be involved in teaching and writing it. I guess you could say that newspapers have appealed to me as well. I can remember years ago going to the Penn Station in Baltimore late in the evening to get a copy of the Times when it arrived by train from New York. Entering college, there was never a doubt that history would be my major. In graduate school, I pursued my interest in the press in history, particularly how it intersects with international relations and diplomacy. That led me to write a dissertation on press response to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. At Valparaiso University I taught a wide variety of courses, surveys of Western civilization and world history, and reading seminars on Irish history, revolutionary Russia, and South Africa. My main upper division courses were Modem European History, Modem British History, British Imperial History, and undergraduate and graduate seminars on World War I and World War II. Valparaiso is a small university where one gets to know colleagues in all departments. One day a friend, a journalism professor, mentioned that he thought I would be interested in a recently formed organization, the American Journalism Historians