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By ELMER SMITH
PHILADELPHIA – One word stands out from the laudatory citation marking the Pulitzer Prize committee’ s posthumous recognition of journalism legend Chuck Stone: Groundbreaking.
Any of us who have planted and tilled in the furrows he churned can tell you, Chuck Stone broke ground for us. And when we struggled to find our voice in this nation’ s media, he told us that we were the change we sought.
Chuck spoke to us, and through us to a generation that had become inured to careless characterizations and even the outright slander of our people.
I was a first-year journalist at the Philadelphia Daily News when I met Chuck in 1973. He and a committed coterie of established Black journalists had already begun laying the groundwork for what would become the National Association of Black Journalists. ABJ( Association of Black Journalists) as the fledgling Philadelphia-based organization was then called, became the template for the founding two years later of NABJ.
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The movement that culminated in the creation of NABJ drew some of the most respected and accomplished Black journalists in America. Each was a leader in their own right. Some were as renowned nationally, and in their hometowns, as Chuck was in Philadelphia. But still they followed his lead. |
The late Les Payne, a Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative reporter and columnist and one of NABJ’ s 44 founding members, summed it up this way:“ There were lots of founders in the room,” he recalled of the gathering of Black journalists on the evening of December 12, 1975.“ But Chuck was the guy holding the clipboard.”
Fifty years later, few people remember the headwinds the NABJ founders faced, or the risks they took in trying to force major media organizations to confront the careless racism that pervaded this nation’ s newsrooms and the content they produced.
But now, a generation after his last column, 11 years after his death, the Pulitzer Prize Committee has issued a citation honoring Charles Sumner“ Chuck” Stone, a man who held the media’ s feet to the fire.
I’ m not sure how Chuck would have felt about this belated recognition. He didn’ t dwell on his honors, and he must have had a drawer full of them. In 2007, he received a
Chuck Stone seated at desk.
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Congressional Gold Medal for his service as a Tuskegee Airmen in WW II. He was one of the most revered educators during his 14 years on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and, of course, was recognized often by his beloved NABJ.
But now as the current occupant of the Oval Office has re-defined diversity, equity and inclusion as pejoratives and set out on a mission to write Blacks out of American history, I think Chuck Stone would have used this occasion to remind us that while NABJ’ s first 50 years have been a good start – this year’ s anniversary celebration is just a groundbreaking for the hard work that lies ahead for this nation’ s Black journalists. •
Elmer Smith was a Philadelphia-based journalist for 38 years. During this time, he came to be called“ a gentleman in journalism,” even as he covered the rough and tumble worlds of professional boxing and Philadelphia politics. Among his many honors is the Nat Fleischer Memorial Award of the Boxing Writers Association of New York.
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Photo by Jon Falk |
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