Morgan Global Journal Review - Fall 2019, Issue 7

FALL 2019 ISSUE 7

The Bahamas: Devastated by A Hurricane and Media Coverage Josephine Baker, A Forgotten Hero When Blacks Went All Out for the GOP

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CONTENT 8

The Morgan Global Journalism Review (MGJR) is an online quarterly published by the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University. MGJR’s mission is to promote journalistic excellence and provide reporting and analysis on media and communications trends, issues and events from an international perspective.

PUBLISHER DeWayne Wickham EDITOR Jackie Jones COPY EDITORS Milton Kent E.R. Shipp Wayne Dawkins DESIGNER Sherry Poole Clark TECHNICAL SUPPORT Christopher Green WEBMASTER Henry McEachnie

CONTACT US: Morgan Global Journalism Review Email: jacqueline.jones@morgan.edu Morgan State University, Communication Center 363 Baltimore, MD 21251 Phone: 443-885-3502

Worst storm ever to hit Northern Bahamas shatters lives: Media coverage shattered the truth of its impact Bahamian journalist Candia Dames reports that the foreign journalists who flocked to The Bahamas to cover the destructive path Hurricane Dorian cut across America’s closest Caribbean neighbor may have done more damage that the super storm.

16 This much is certain: Donald Trump has invited foreign countries to tamper with U.S. elections In the middle of the impeachment debate that has immobilized much of official Washington, cable TV commentator and MSU Professor Jason Johnson says President Donald Trump has“actively worked to undermine the nation’s ability to safely, reliably and consistently select our leaders.”

18 Josephine Baker a missing part of World War II history The world remembers Josephine Baker as a black entertainer who fled Jim Crow America in 1925 for France and a career that made her an international superstar. Ricki Stevenson reminds us that Baker’s greatest - and little known - performance was as a World War II spy.

22 A view of America from 35,000 feet Afro German filmmaker John Kantara stopped in the United States during a recent multinational assignment and reflected on what he saw as he flew from Washington to Seoul, South Korea.

24 When a journey of service became a trip of discovery Laura Dorsey-Elson journeyed to Cuba for an academic exchange. But once there she followed a single lead that helped her husband discover an old friend - and helped her make a new one.

31 100 years ago blacks were contemplating their future...in the Republican Party The 1920 presidential election was one in which many black journalists, political and social activists backed the Republican candidate for the American presidency. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist E.R. Shipp tells us why.

REGULAR FEATURES 4 Dean’s Corner DeWayne Wickham is dean of the School of Global Journalism & Communication 6 Letter from the editor Jackie Jones is assistant dean for programs and chair of the Department of Multimedia Journalism

BOOK SMART 28 Diversity, Inc For more than half a century workplace diversity - especially racial diversity - has been an elusive goal. Pamela Newkirk uncovers why many diversity efforts fail - and what makes those that work a success.

29 Lucile H. Bluford and The Kansas City Call: Activist Voice for Social Justice In this well researched book, Sheila Brooks and Clint C. Wilson II shine a literary spotlight on the work of Bluford, who spent more than 70 years in the newspaper business.

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MORGAN GLOBAL JOURNALISM REVIEW Published by the Morgan State University School of Global Journalism & Communication BOARD OF VISITORS Dr. Sheila Brooks, chair Alonzo Byrd, vice chair Wanda Draper Phil Currie Annette Gibbs Garry Howard Madelyn Jennings Virgil Smith Josie Thomas Sam Davis Ricky Smith George Demaree Cheryl Smith Marsheila Hayes Valencia McClure PRESIDENT Dr. David Wilson PROVOST Dr. Lesia Crumpton-Young DEAN, SCHOOL OF GLOBAL JOURNALISM & COMMUNICATION Mr. DeWayne Wickham

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DEAN’S CORNER

BY DEWAYNE WICKHAM

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his volume of the Morgan Global Journalism Review is long overdue. Its publication was delayed by our courtship of another delivery system, one that ultimately proved unsustainable. So we have returned to the online magazine format that we used to launch this journalism review – which offers readers a uniquely African American perspective on black life and issues in the African diaspora.

We do that in this issue with a cover story on the failings of the foreign media coverage of the destruction that Hurricane Dorian inflicted on parts, but not all of The Bahamas. Written

by Candia Dames – who is the managing editor of the Nassau Guardian and arguably her nation’s finest journalist – this story challenges U.S. media organizations to do a better job of covering disasters in foreign lands.

In another article, Ricki Stevenson, a former broadcast journalist who lives in Paris, tells a story about Josephine Baker, the legendary black entertainer who emigrated to France in 1925, that was largely overlooked earlier this year when world leaders and much of the world’s media celebrated the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Stevenson, herself a black expatriate, reveals how Baker’s risked her life to her adopted country when Nazi Germany occupied France during World War II. And finally, E.R. Shipp, a Pulitzer Prize winner and associate professor in Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication has contributed a piece that looks back 100 years to a time when black voters pinned their hopes for a better life on a Republican presidential candidate. It is a cautionary tale about American presidential elections – one that drives home the point that black voters have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

These stories help make this issue an appealing renewal of the Morgan Global Journalism Review.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW. MORGAN.EDU/SGJC or contact Jackie Jones at Jacqueline.Jones@morgan.edu 5

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

BY JACKIE JONES

I was delightfully surprised when the U.S. Postal Service announced in October that the 43rd stamp in its Black Heritage series would honor the late journalist Gwen Ifill. Besides being a famous and highly regarded newswoman with a distinguished career in print and broadcast, Ifill was my friend.

We met as young reporter at The Evening Sun in Baltimore in the early 1980s and remained close until her untimely death from cancer in 2016 at the age of 61.

Each New Year’s Day, Ifill held an open house at her Northwest Washington, D.C. home, where journalists and newsmakers of all stripes met to break bread and chat amiably throughout the day. It was such an important start to the New Year for me, I made sure I returned from or postponed departing for vacation so that I wouldn’t miss the party.

“It’s not official until I see you walk through that door,” she would say, greeting me with a big hug when I arrived.

Ifill was known for her contributions throughout print and television journalism, having worked at The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBC News, before joining PBS, where she probably is best known as co-host of the “PBS News Hour.”

Ifill worked for PBS for 17 years, covering eight presidential campaigns and moderating two vice-presidential debates. She was also the moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week,” a weekly political analysis show.

Roy Betts, a corporate communications spokesman for the postal service, said that while Ifill was neither the first female nor the first black journalist on a commemorative stamp, her confirmation was among the fastest, coming about a year after her nomination.

“It’s a public process and you, the public, have spoken,” Betts said.

For the past 16 years, he added, “some folks have been advocating for (late CBS news anchor) Walter Cronkite and they are still waiting.”

Ida B. Wells was the first black female journalist honored with

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after finding references about Ifill in “Rugged Waters: Black Journalists,” [2003, August Press], the second of two books Dawkins had written about the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), which he serves as its official historian.

Stroud asked Dawkins to serve as a consultant, which required checking the nominating essay about Ifill for tone and accuracy and reviewing the commissioned artwork: the Robert Severi photo, which was redesigned by postal service art director Derry Noyes, to ensure it was, in Dawkins’ words, “attractive and appropriate.”

a stamp in 1990. Ethel Payne, often called “The First Lady of the Black Press,” was one of four journalists honored in a “Women in Journalism” set in 2002. Publishing magnate John H. Johnson, founder of Ebony and Jet magazines, was commemorated in a 2012 stamp.

As part of the process, however, Dawkins was sworn to secrecy about the project until Oct. 22, the day the USPS formally announced the list of commemorative stamps to be released in early 2020.

October’s announcement turned out to be doubly pleasant when I also learned longtime journalist, scholar and colleague Wayne Dawkins, an associate professor of multimedia journalism in Morgan’s School of Global Journalism & Communication, had been a consultant to the Ifill stamp process.

Carol Stroud, a U.S. Postal Service researcher, contacted Dawkins

African American and Hispanic Journalists and Publisher Appearing on U.S. Postage Stamps Ida B. Wells Stamp Issued: 1990 John H. Johnson Stamp Issued 2012 Ruben Salazar Stamp Issued 2008 Ethel L. Payne Stamp Issued: 2002

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Wayne Dawkins During the process he also was asked by Rob Heinrich, research editor from the American National Biography, to write an essay about Ifill. In September, that profile was accepted for publication in the forthcoming ANB, published by Oxford University Press.

Journalists, it is often said, provide the first drafts of history.

Sometimes, though, they also make history. n

Worst storm ever to hit Northern Baha Media coverage shattered the truth of its impact

NASSAU, The Bahamas – Although much of the international coverage Hurricane Dorian attracted dried up with the receding tides of the hurricane’s surge, the implications of the terror it inflicted on so many families and communities in these idyllic isles, which start about 50 miles off the coast of South Florida, won’t be fully revealed for years to come.

BY CANDIA DAMES

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amas shatters lives

Dorian’s devastation in The Mudd shantytown in Marsh Harbour, Abaco.

Abacos, Grand Bahama and New Providence.

Dorian became the worst storm on record to hit The Bahamas, with wind speeds of 185 miles per hour and gusts exceeding 200 miles per hour, leaving thousands reeling from unprecedented destruction The Bahamas was suddenly the focus of worldwide attention, but not for a reason Bahamians were excited about.

The coverage was comprehensive and largely driven by social media. People on Abaco and Grand Bahama, many of them fighting for their lives, used their cell phones to capture the terror that was Dorian.

Within minutes of the storm hitting Abaco, images of its devastation started to emerge: There was one woman’s desperate attempt to save her four-month-old baby as the surge started to swallow their Marsh Harbour, Abaco, home; images of families trapped in their attics; pictures of houses and businesses flattened, flooded streets and also dramatic scenes of heroism – many of these images that emerged were transmitted via social media.

This ferocious hurricane — which has changed how many people in the archipelago now view hurricanes — led to the mass exodus of residents, many of whom were left with little more than the clothes on their backs.

For journalists, there is something deeply appealing about covering hurricanes and other natural disasters.

These powerful storms are often unpredictable as they take aim at islands that have no real escape from the violence and torment they can inflict. For American media covering Dorian, there was an added appeal.

Early forecasts also put parts of Florida in its crosshairs.

Ahead of the September storm’s arrival in The Bahamas, media from many countries, most notably the United States, descended on The Bahamas, a country with fewer than 400,000 residents that seldom makes international headlines.

Some who fled the devastation went to Florida, most were evacuated to New Providence, one of the smallest Bahamian islands, but the most crowded. It is where the capital, Nassau, is located.

CNN, The Weather Channel, Florida’s Local 10 News, an ABC affiliate, and others sent teams to the

They told horrific stories of watching loved ones drown or being crushed to death. Some talked of their own desperate and barely successful

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attempts to stay alive in the face of this cataclysmic event.

But while U.S. media, many of them with access to tremendous resources, did commendable work in telling the world what was happening, some of them missed an important context.

While reporters spent their days on Abaco and Grand Bahama — each roughly a half hour flight from Nassau — some U.S. news stations reported live from Nassau at night with shots of the famed Atlantis in the background. This no doubt gave many of their viewers the impression that Nassau and Paradise Island were being hit by the hurricane. But they weren’t.

The choice of this reporting location without a clear acknowledgement that the island of New Providence had not been in the hurricane’s wake has no doubt damaged the country’s important tourism brand.

In The Bahamas, tourism accounts for nearly 60 percent of the country’s GDP. As Dorian pummeled parts of the country, tourism officials were on major news networks explaining that most parts of The Bahamas were spared a direct hit.

But as Dorian neared the northern Bahamas, The Weather Channel reported that “all major resorts in The Bahamas have been evacuated.”

This was inaccurate.

The largest resorts in The Bahamas are located on New Providence and Paradise Island, which is a short distance from Nassau. These are the main tourism centers of the country.

The storm had very limited impact

Many evacuees in New Providence shelters do not know where they are going next. They do not know how they will survive

A man holds a child while awaiting an evacuation flight at the Treasure Cay airport on Abaco island on Sept., 6 several days after Hurricane Dorian hit the island.

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on New Providence. There was some flooding, but the island was not devastated. No resort on that island or on Paradise Island was significantly impacted.

Still, CNN carried headlines across its screen saying, “Dorian destroys Bahamas.” This was like saying after Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 that the United States was destroyed.

In some areas, the errant reporting had a greater consequence than the storm itself. One small hotelier on the island of Great Exuma, for example, which is known for its famous swimming pigs, reported that all his bookings for September were canceled after the storm, although Exuma is located in the central part of The Bahamas archipelago and experienced perfect weather as Dorian pulverized other areas of the chain of islands.

Even efforts to get it straight proved to be inconsistent.

After Bahamian media brought to CNN’s attention that it was presenting a false narrative to its viewers, CNN.com published an article explaining The Bahamas’ geography and what Dorian did and did not do to the islands. But even that Sept. 4 article was not completely accurate. The story falsely stated that all the cruise ships that come to The Bahamas go to Grand Bahama, New Providence and Paradise Island.

Cruise ships visit other islands in The Bahamas like Eleuthera and the Berry Islands, but the CNN story at least captured the point that The Bahamas is made up of 700 islands that stretch over 100,000 square miles of water and Dorian devastated the two northern islands.

Coffins unearthed by Hurricane Dorian in East Grand Bahama

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Home destroyed by Hurricane Dorian in East Grand Bahama

Hurricane Dorian’s devastation in East Grand Bahama

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An aerial view of Hurricane Dorian’s devastation on Abaco island.

A day earlier, though, CNN.com published an article titled “Bahamas’ tourism could be devastated for a long time after Hurricane Dorian,” but the story contradicted the headline.

“The damage to the Bahamian economy might be mitigated by the path of the storm, which is currently crawling over the northern Bahamas,” according to the report. “As a result, it is devastating areas with fewer hotel rooms compared to other areas of the country, according to Rick Newton, a founding partner at Resort Capital Partners.”

While the headline talks about the tourism being devastated for a long time to come, the story also noted “the Abacos and Grand Bahama Islands have roughly 2,250 hotel rooms, which amounts to less than 15 percent of the hotel inventory in the country.

“That’s fewer than the roughly 11,000 rooms on the island of Nassau, where mega-resorts such as Baha Mar and Atlantis are located,” CNN.com reported.

At the risk of nitpicking, Bahamians would quickly point out that Nassau is not an island, but the downtown

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area of the island of New Providence.

This means that Baha Mar is not located in Nassau, but in Cable Beach, and Atlantis is on Paradise Island.

“Naturally, when reporting the effects of Hurricane Dorian on the islands of The Bahamas, most reporters made very little effort to distinguish between what part of The Bahamas was affected and what part of The Bahamas was unaffected, and therefore, most of the listening and reading public came away with the impression that the entire country was ravaged,” said Dionisio D’Aguilar, the country’s tourism minister.

Two residents walk amidst the rubble on Grand Cay, Abaco, on September 12 D’Aguilar said the reporting with no specificity about exactly what and was not affected by Dorian “has had a significant impact on bookings to those islands totally unscathed by the storm.”

Some media outlets and journalism reviews also made blanket statements that were at least confusing or unsubstantiated, if not inaccurate.

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The Columbia Journalism Review, in a Sept. 20 article, reported: “Most Bahamians still get their news offline, from local papers and radio rather than international English-language media networks.

In the two weeks since the storm, journalists struggled to report with fewer resources...then the international press arrived, and some local reporters felt their access start to slip.”

those areas of The Bahamas were educated on the geological and economic makeup of the islands.

Weeks after Dorian tore through parts of The Bahamas, the storm’s nightmare is still unfolding.

Many evacuees in New Providence shelters do not know where they are going next. They do not know how they will survive. Their arrival in New Providence has implications that are multi-layered and that will likely take some time to unravel.

While the official death toll is put at less than 100, hundreds of people remain missing more than a month after Dorian moved beyond The Bahamas. The long-term emotional and psychological impact of Dorian will be significant. The storm’s social impact is also a story the local media will have to tell in coming months.

The writer made an assumption about how most Bahamians get their news and seemed to suggest that Bahamians do not get local news in English, which is inaccurate.

For reasons that make perfect financial sense, some U.S. media outlets hired stringers in The Bahamas to do groundwork and write stories. This resulted in Bahamian reporters with less than a

year’s journalism experience under their belts ending up with bylines on the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In journalism, context matters.

Fortunately, some in the U.S. media recognized this. On Sept. 3, The New York Times published a history of Abaco and Grand Bahama.

Readers who were unfamiliar with

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There are local stories that could have a spillover effect in the U.S. and other parts of the Caribbean.

And for this reason, the continuing story of the damage done by Dorian on The Bahamas will be one that demands the ongoing attention of local and foreign news organizations, but with greater accuracy, specificity and context. n Candia Dames is managing editor of the Nassau Guardian

This much is certain: Donald Trum foreign countries to tamper with

BY JASON JOHNSON

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According to the whistleblower, Trump – in a phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky – tied U.S. aid to Ukraine to that country’s willingness to cooperate with his request. The phone call came just one day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller went before a congressional committee to testify about accusations that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign sought help from Russian agents in his victory over Hillary Clinton.

he last week of September 2019 will probably go down as one of the worst weeks in the sordid history of the Donald Trump presidency.

A suppressed whistleblower complaint alleged that the president dangled foreign aid before the new leader of Ukraine in exchange for the latter digging up dirt on Joe Biden, the Democrat Trump feared would be his opponent in next year’s presidential election.

If the charge of Trump’s outreach to Volodymyr is true, what Trump did is tantamount to the actions of a car thief who gets out of jail on parole and 24 hours later tries to steal another car. It also would be a violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against a federal officeholder from accepting something of value from a foreign leader or government without the consent of Congress.

While journalists and pundits debate this issue, the trauma it’s caused to the American political system has heated up the talk of impeaching and removing Trump from office. It has also given rise to this question: What would this action against Trump, a Republican, do to the chances of Democrats winning control of the White House in 2020?

While this is certainly a question that drives inside the beltway chatter, it is also insipid, short-sighted and one of the single worst questions to be posed heading into the 2020 presidential campaign.

The Democrats’ effort to unseat Trump next year is also overshadowed by another more troubling reality: Trump has repeatedly and brazenly invited foreign countries to materially interfere in the presidential election of 2016 and now 2020. It neither matters if those efforts were successful, nor if the United States engages in similar behavior abroad. The president’s job is to uphold the law and the integrity of our election process. Trump has not only failed in this duty, he’s actively worked to undermine the nation’s ability to safely and reliably conduct a presidential election.

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mp has invited h U.S. elections That is an impeachable offense that should be taken seriously, regardless of whether it is politically popular.

To the degree that anyone should care about the politics of impeachment, we should all remember that Trump is not a popularly-elected president.

The majority of the voters (by a margin of more than 3 million people) cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So impeaching Trump would not overturn the popular will of the American people.

Congress has a constitutional duty to keep a check on presidential behavior, and to decide when, how and to what extent a president’s powers need to be curtailed. Thus far the Democrats, who control the House of Representatives – where a move to impeach Trump must start – have appeared to be more concerned about the integrity of our elections and our Democracy, than how a decision to impeach Trump will impact the 2020 election.

We should encourage and applaud this kind of integrity rather than gum up public discourse with questions of political strategy and experience - the vast majority of which we can’t predict at this point anyway. With an impeachment inquiry underway, there may be a House vote on removing Trump from office before the end of this year, with a Senate trial coming early next year. Given the larger concerns that Trump’s alleged bad acts raise, we can leave questions about the impact of a decision to impeach him for voters to answer when they go to the polls next November. n Dr. Jason Johnson is an associate professor in Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication and a regular commentator on MSNBC

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Josephine Baker a missing part of World War II history

As leaders from around the world massed in France on June 6, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day – the Allies invasion that was the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe – the talk was of men like Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

No mention was made of Josephine Baker.

BY RICKI STEVENSON

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ust as it mystifies many people that Steven Spielberg won four Academy Awards for “Saving Private Ryan,” his 1998 World War II movie that largely ignored the role of the African Americans in the events surrounding D-Day, it befuddles others that Baker’s role in the fight to defeat Nazi Germany was overlooked.

The journey that took Baker, who was born in St. Louis, to France and a date with history began in 1925.

That year she and 23 other young black musicians, singers and dancers, took Paris by storm in the show “La Revue Negre.” It was in Paris where Baker learned what it meant to be accepted for who she was – and not hated for her color. It was a lesson she carried throughout the rest of her life.

Baker would later say of her decision to leave the United States for France that “I had dreamed of going there ever since Albert, one of the waiters at the Plantation Club in Manhattan, had shown me a picture of the Eiffel Tower. It looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter?

“What was the good of having the statue without the liberty, the freedom to go where one chose, if one was held back by one’s color? No I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made me no promises. I had sworn to myself that I would see it one day.

And suddenly here was my chance,” Baker recalled of her decision to emigrate to France.

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Baker funeral at the Bobino Theatre

Baker made the best of that move.

She became the toast of French entertainment, performing to large audiences and rave reviews. In 1934, Baker became the first entertainer in Europe to get a pilot’s license, buy her own plane and fly herself to her own concert dates.

Baker enjoyed her celebrity and the personal freedom France afforded her. In return, she was willing to risk her life for the French. After the Nazis invaded Norway and Denmark in 1941, Baker went to work for the Red Cross, flying much needed food and supplies across the border to Belgium. Two months later, Germany invaded France and occupied Paris in June 1940.

Baker, the superstar of French stage and screen, was the most photographed woman in the world, the owner of an elegant, gated mansion in the upscale suburb of Le

Vesinet, just outside Paris. But what few knew was that traveling with her was a French Army officer, Jacques Abtey, who months earlier in 1939, had been assigned to recruit Baker to serve as a spy for the French military intelligence.

By the fall of 1940, Baker was using her celebrity and acting skills to help French Resistance fighters who were waging an underground campaign against the Nazis. She worked closely with Abtey, whom she claimed was her secretary. This cover allowed him to travel freely with her while performing his intelligence work.

The story is told that one day Baker answered a knock at the door of her mansion, the Chateau des Milandes, and found herself facing a group of grim-faced Nazis.

They’d arrived intending to search her 50-room chateau after hearing

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rumors she was hiding resistance sympathizers, weapons and maybe radio equipment.

Ever the grand dame, Baker welcomed them inside, invited them to take off their hats, coats and to sit with her for tea and cookies. Her charm was disarming – to a point.

They began pressing for answers and Baker knew this was a do-or-die moment. She drew herself up to her full 5-foot-7 frame and declared: “How dare you come into my home asking silly questions? Don’t you know who I am?” With that, she calmly but firmly showed them out.

That gutsy, sangfroid display of outrage proved Baker the perfect candidate for the dangerous job she had taken on.

Through this and other acts of bravery, Baker assured leaders of the French Resistance she was prepared to die to protect her

Charles DeGaulle awarded Baker the Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor in 1946, later there was a public pinning ceremony in 1961

adopted country, the country that had offered her freedom from racism in America and made her an international superstar.

Baker received extensive training for her new job as a spy. She was taught to shoot a handgun, dousing the flame on a candle from 60 feet; and drilled to the point of fluency in German and Italian. She learned karate and mastered memory techniques that allowed her to retain detailed information for weeks.

Once her training ended, Baker was handed a bottle of cyanide pills. She was told if the Nazis ever found out what she was doing she would suffer a brutal death at their hands. The cyanide would offer her an escape from that fate.

Baker and Abtey regularly traveled through countries under occupation by theNazis. Traveling by car or train she was considered too big a star to be stopped by custom

France and were pushing the Nazis out of other occupied territories.

officials. But on one occasion, she told border guards who questioned her that she was on tour and Abtey was her secretary. Then, turning to Abtey, she said convincingly, “take the bags out to the car, darling.”

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In most instances the secret messages that Baker carried were successfully delivered to leaders of the French Underground, as well as Gen. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Forces during World War II and, later, the country’s president.

“There is no sense waging war on Hitler and the racist Nazis if discrimination is allowed to exist on the battlefield,” she said.

But a near-tragedy hit in 1941.

While traveling with Abtey, Baker fell ill and was hospitalized in Morocco. For nearly 19 months she languished near death with a mysterious illness. When she finally recovered in 1943, Baker was weak but returned to her work. Despite warnings from her doctors, she laid out plans to do a musical tour, her way of giving back to troops of the Allied Forces that had retaken

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ut Baker had one major demand: She would entertain the Allied troops only if black soldiers were allowed to sit next to white soldiers instead of being forced to stand at the back of the audience.

Her demand, as controversial at the time as taking a knee during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner, was agreed to by U.S. military leaders. From that day until the war ended in 1945, Baker entertained integrated audiences of American, French, African and British military troops in camps across North Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

For her heroism, Baker received some of France’s highest honors; including the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre and the Medal of Resistance with Rosette.

country and the medals it had bestowed on her for her heroism – acts of courage that helped to pave the way for the D-Day invasion that world leaders celebrated this year without any mention of her. n

When she returned to the United States in 1963 to attend the March on Washington, Josephine Baker wore the uniform of her adopted

Ricki Stevenson is an American expatriate who lives in Paris and is the owner-operator of Black Paris Tours

Wearing the uniform at the 1963 March on Washington

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A view of America’s media from 35,000 feet Aboard flight from Washington, D.C. to Seoul, Korea – Leaving Washington D.C. on a 14hour Korean Airlines flight to Seoul was the last leg of a three-week filming journey that had taken me and my production crew through the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the United States.

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his flight is fully booked.

That’s bad news because, for most of us, the times when journalists fly business class around the globe are long gone.

These days it’s coach and, if you´re lucky, the passenger next to you is not snoring.

On this assignment, our goal is to create a 45-minute science and technology documentary about the promise of satellite constellations to bridge the global digital divide by providing “fiber from the sky” to every point on the planet. Commissioned

by ZDF German TV, our film will document a technological revolution, which could bring the other half of humanity that is currently offline online for the first time. This accomplishment would provide a free flow of information for as many as four billion people who are not now connected to the Internet.

My film crew is made up of veteran cameraman Sven Kiesche, Maximilian Bartusch, a 21-yearold sound technician and me, John A. Kantara, a documentary filmmaker and professor of journalism from Berlin, Germany.

Sven and I have traveled the world in the past 20 years, from Asia, across Africa and Europe to North America, always chasing a good science story. Our work

BY JOHN KANTARA

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Those who cry “fake news” whenever facts don’t support them, and a screaming, lying president are not the benchmark of America’s free press sometimes brings us to the United States. That has to do with America´s technological prowess which, in large part, is fueled by clever immigrants who “make it” in America.

The United States has a tremendously successful business environment, which finances ideas from around the globe.

It is often America’s foreignborn talent and innovation that drive American commerce and jobs, and we have been happy to report on these marvelous developments, be they from Silicon Valley or Boston’s Biotech startups.

But then came Donald Trump.

True, even before 2016, America seemed to be on a less welcoming trajectory regarding immigration and foreign nationals, especially if they were Muslim. I remember being in Long Beach, California on Sept. 11, 2001. Not only were all commercial planes grounded for almost two weeks, but after America was so viciously attacked that day you could feel how suspicion of foreigners had crept into the American psyche.

Even the first black president could not stem America’s rejection of the outside world – an antipathy for immigrants that eventually lifted Trump into the Oval Office. Trump’s

anti-immigration policies have forced the children of Latino immigrants detained along the southern border of the U.S. into cages as he’s decreed, according to The Washington Post, that the metal wall he’s building along the U.S.-Mexico border is being covered with heat absorbing paint to make it too painful for would-be climbers to scale.

The world is watching.

My 14- and 17-year-old children do not want me to continue traveling to the United States, but I still believe in America.

Why? Mainly because of young Americans. At the offices of the company building the “OneWeb Satellite Constellation” I met a young black female engineer, who will pilot the satellites in near earth orbit from McLean, Virginia.

She was acutely aware that 50 years after the Apollo missions, she is helping to open a new space for global media. I could see in her gleaming eyes that she knows she is an important part of this future. That gives me hope.

And, I am also hopeful because of America’s free press. Those who cry “fake news” whenever facts don’t support them, and a screaming, lying president are not the benchmark of America’s free press – they never will be – but,

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fact checkers are. Journalists who expose blatant lies and misconduct have never been more important, because it really is true, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

That’s why journalists have to continue to go places, see with their own eyes, analyze and report truthfully stories based on facts. That requires a thorough understanding of the world we cover, so that journalists can be trusted to honestly open up the world to their viewers and readers.

So, to my young colleagues of Morgan State University´s School of Global Journalism & Communication – get a passport, learn a foreign language and start leaving your comfort zones.

It´s worth it, if journalism is the career you want to pursue.

And it’s necessary, if journalists are to be the guardians of democracy. n John Kantara is an Afro German documentary filmmaker and journalism professor in Berlin, Germany

A journey of discovery, where the f

BY LAURA DORSEY-ELSON Nereyda del Valle & Laura Dorsey-Elson

HAVANA, Cuba – The adage that “life is a beautiful journey” could not have proven truer than during my recent trip to Havana, Cuba, where I had the pleasure of meeting Nereyda del Valle, making a new friend – and reuniting two long-lost friends after 41 years.

Let me start from the beginning.

In 1978, my husband, Omowale Elson, a native of Barbados, was 24 years old and had no idea he would eventually marry a woman from the United States 20 years later. At the time, he was part of a theater group that was invited to Cuba to participate in the 11th World Festival of Youth & Students.

Young people from around the world (including the United States) attended this event, which provided a rich environment for crossnational and cultural exchanges. It was during this gathering that the young Omowale met young Nereyda, launching a friendship that began between these two Caribbean artists and activists.

When the festival ended, Omowale and Nereyda promised to keep their friendship going through letters and phone calls and to not let the distance between Barbados and Cuba prevent them from doing so. For several years, they did just that. But as time passed, and their lives drifted further into adulthood, families, and careers, they lost contact.

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future meets the past Then, in November 2019, 41 years after they last saw each other, I entered this story.

I was a member of a delegation from Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication (SGJC), led

by SGJC Dean DeWayne Wickham, which traveled to Cuba for meetings at the University of Havana.

My responsibility was to facilitate a dialogue with communication faculty at the school with which Morgan has had a memorandum of understanding for several years.

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efore I left for Cuba, my husband asked me to try to “look up an old friend.”

The only help he gave me was a faded envelope with a decades-old return address for Nereyda. The building she lived in back then was called Edificio America, which serendipitously translates from Spanish into English to the “America Building.”

So, as I left the United States for Havana for an exciting professional exchange, I took with me an important personal mission.

Over the five days, I was in Cuba, I experienced the beauty and complexity of its people, food, music, and history. I

Edificio America - Nereyda del Valle’s Home

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quickly gained what I always do when I leave the familiarity of my home culture; a perspective and respect for the diversity that the world has to offer.

But as the trip was about to end, I had not yet made contact with Nereyda. I didn’t want to return home to tell my husband as much, so I elicited the help of Lino, our driver, and Juan, our wonderful host, and translator.

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fter a circuitous journey through a labyrinth of Havana neighborhoods – aided

by Lino’s tenacity – I found Nereyda living in Edificio America, the same building that was her home in 1978. As

el Valle Nereyda d

- Havana,

I approached her apartment, I walked up the same stairs, rode in the same elevator, walked down the same hall and knocked on the same door that my husband had when he visited her home 41 years earlier.

As the door opened, I was met by this wonderful spirit of a woman. Of course, Nereyda had no idea who I was. But upon learning I was Omowale Elson’s wife, she smiled and hugged me warmly. What a moment that was. She invited me into her home, we sat and talked, and I filled her in as best I could about her friend Omowale as she repeatedly

Cuba 1978

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exclaimed: “What an incredible surprise!”

In turn, Nereyda shared with me stories about her life, including her long career as a teacher, the loss of her husband 13 years earlier and how she now tutors young Cubans in English (a lesson plan for which she was preparing when I knocked on her door).

Nereyda introduced me to her daughter, who lived next door and spoke of her son, a Cuban government employee, who often helped her get emails to people. He would help her send Omowale a note very soon, she told me.

Before long, an hour had passed, and it was time for me to leave. By then, I was not the same person who had arrived at her door. I had a new friend now. And Nereyda and my husband, Omowale, were reconnected. Days later, when my husband saw a special video message Nereyda recorded for him, he just kept saying: “That is so deep.”

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es, it was a deeply beautiful journey that intertwined my first trip to Cuba with my husband’s memories of his visit here decades ago – and a longlost friend whom I helped him rediscover. n Dr. Laura Dorsey-Elson is the director of instruction for Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication

Omowale Elson - Havana, Cuba 1978

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BOOKSMART

BY DEWAYNE WICKHAM

In her first book, Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, published by NYU Books in 2000, Pamela Newkirk chronicled the inroads that black journalists made into mainstream newspapers during the closing decades of the 20th century, and the potholes they encountered as they sought to report on black life for newspapers written primarily for white audiences.

In her latest book Diversity, Inc: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business, she looks at how a wide swath of American businesses put a higher value on efforts to diversify their workforce than on the results they produce.

“During more than three decades of my professional life, diversity has been a national preoccupation,” Newkirk writes in the introduction to her latest book. “Yet despite decades of handwringing, costly initiatives, and uncomfortable conversations, progress in most elite American institutions has been negligible.”

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or all of the billions of dollars being spent on diversity there has not been a commensurate change in the proportion of African Americans and Latinos in the workplace, especially “in the most influential fields,” she said during a radio interview.

But the strength of her book is found not in what she says about the bias, conscious or not, that undermines efforts to diversify the workplace. What makes Newkirk’s book worth reading is her incisive dissection of the diversity initiatives that work.

In looking at the largely failed efforts to bring about meaningful change to this nation’s workplace, Diversity Inc. offers readers some smart, well-researched answers to the question: How do we get out of this mess? n

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One of the great underreported stories of American journalism is the role that black women have played in the front ranks of the black press. Of course, a lot – though not enough – has been written about Ida B. Wells, the fiery Memphis, Tenn., newspaper publisher who challenged Southern lynchers of innocent blacks and who went on to cofound the NAACP.

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ut others like Charlotta Bass, the publisher of the California Eagle who in 1952 became the first black woman to be named the vice presidential candidate of a major political party, and former Afro American newspaper publisher Frances L. Murphy, the scion of a legendary family of black journalists have gotten far less attention.

In their book, Lucile H. Bluford and the Kansas City Call: Activist Voice for Social Justice, Sheila Brooks and Clint C. Wilson shine a literary spotlight on the life of Bluford, a black female journalist who historians had largely ignored.

They tell the story of the seven decades Bluford spent at the Kansas City Call and the little publicized, but highly successful battles she fought against racism and unequal justice, a courageous fight that lasted until she died at age 91, in 2003.

This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to know the full story of how racial barriers were toppled, and for everyone who has gotten this far in life without being introduced to Lucile Bluford. n

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Pages From The Archives

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100 years ago blacks were contemplating their future ... in the Republican Party.

BY E.R. SHIPP

In the early hours of Jan. 6, 1919, former President Theodore Roosevelt died at Sagamore Hill, his home in New York – and so, it seemed, did the hopes black people had that the 1920 presidential election would return a friendly face to the White House after eight years of the racist Woodrow Wilson.

Roosevelt won the hearts of the American Negroes as no president since Lincoln. Their votes would have elected him in 1920 as in 1904, but the fates have decreed otherwise.”

“Theodore Roosevelt, Greatest American Since Lincoln, Believed and Practiced in His Life Equality of All Men. A Sincere Friend of the Race,” the Baltimore Afro-American announced in the Jan. 10, 1919 editions of the black-owned newspaper that were distributed along the Eastern Seaboard. More pointedly, its editorial declared: “As a big, energetic, plain living, plain speaking, honest American, Mr.

As demoralizing as the year had begun, the fates would decree even worse as the months unfolded: black veterans returning home from war imbued what the Equal Justice Initiative

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“Only two years ago you were heralded as perhaps the second Lincoln, and now the Afro-American leaders who supported you are hounded as false leaders and traitors to their race”

has described as “new and contagious confidence and assertiveness”; whites trying to impede tens of thousands of blacks who continued to abandon the South for opportunities in northern cities; labor unrest on the rise as blacks entered the workforce; and a reborn Ku Klux Klan flexing its terroristic muscles.

The national government focused primarily on securing the peace in Europe and addressing economic challenges at home. Blacks had not been a priority since the betrayal of 1877, when the federal government withdrew troops assigned to protect freedmen in the South and greenlighted a restoration of white supremacy. As W. E. B. DuBois wrote in his 1935 tome Black Reconstruction: “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

So it was that a century ago, shapers of black opinion – including educators, religious figures, celebrated orators, labor activists, leaders of the 10-year-old National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the 8-year-old National Urban League, newspaper publishers like William Monroe Trotter, Robert S. Abbott and John H. Murphy, and the editor of Crisis magazine, DuBois – found themselves mulling over the best options for the 1920 presidential campaign. Their speeches, reports, petitions, commentaries and meetings were chronicled in the pages of the black press, whose powerful editorials

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amplified the message. All recognized that the first presidential election after the Great War could bring a welcome change from Woodrow Wilson.

American leaders who supported you are hounded as false leaders and traitors to their race,” he told the president, who after a few testy exchanges, kicked Trotter and the delegation out, telling the publisher, “Your tone, sir, offends me.” Following that widelyreported disastrous meeting, white newspapers in New York, Boston and Philadelphia joined the black press in condemning the president’s segregationist policies.

As a candidate in 1912, Wilson had offered hope, leaving Trotter, among others, “walking on air.” The NAACP and many editors urged blacks to choose a Democrat, abandoning the Republican Party to which they no longer felt beholden. As the Afro later summarized in reflecting on the election of 1912, blacks thought ”the day was at hand when the colored man would divide his vote substantially….Wilson was elected and the hope of the race grew stronger that Democracy would lose some of its ancient prejudices and deal with the Negro as a man. Hundreds of colored Democrats attended his inauguration.”

With the war effort taking precedence by the spring of 1917, the black press chose to champion patriotism while also pushing for fair treatment of black soldiers and black laborers filling industrial jobs. With the end of war, the black press resumed its primary mission of pleading the cause of black people without self-imposed censorship.

But opinion leaders soon realized they had been bamboozled by a president who early on permitted a color line in government employment that degraded, demoted and dismissed blacks from certain civil service jobs, including those at the post office. A white man was even sent to Haiti as the U.S. envoy, a post that had been held by Frederick Douglass a quarter century before.

Returning soldiers who DuBois said had fought for democracy abroad “[f ]or the America that represents and gloats in lynching, disfranchisement, caste, brutality and devilish insult” were as anxious as anyone for a radical change in the status quo.

“By the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land,” DuBois declared in the May 1919 Crisis.

Giving notice on behalf of the 367,000 black men who served in the wartime military, he added: “We return.

So Trotter, publisher of the Guardian in Boston, cast aside niceties when he led a delegation to the White House in 1914. “Only two years ago you were heralded as perhaps the second Lincoln, and now the Afro-

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We return from fighting. We return fighting.”

And the clashes mounted. From April 14 in Millen, Georgia, through Nov. 30 in Lake City, Florida, anti-black riots erupted in at least 25 cities.

Lynchings crested at 76, according to the tally kept by the Tuskegee Institute, with World War I veterans particularly targeted.

White people, livid that black sharecroppers were forming a labor union, rampaged for three days, killing more than 200 black men, women and children.

Skirmishes among black workers and white workers were widely reported, like one in a Youngstown, Ohio, steel mill that made the front page of the New York Age of Oct. 18. But still blacks came in search of jobs.

Earlier in the year the Associated Negro Press, the wire service, explained how Chicago was being transformed: “Demand for labor, high wages and the awakening of the Negro through travels induced by the war, together with southern discrimination and lynchings, are among the causes of the tremendous influx.”

By December, the Defender announced: “CHICAGO IS SECOND IN OUR POPULATION: Jumps from Fifth Place Since 1910; City Has 125,000 Colored Residents.” Citing a new report from the National Urban League, the Defender reported: “Since 1915 Chicago has added approximately 75,000 people to its Colored population. This is true of no other city. Detroit and Newark have increased their Negro population between 300 and 400 percent during the last four years. But neither of these cities has a Negro population half so large as Chicago’s….”

In the midst of this human surge, on July 27, white resentment in Chicago erupted in rioting that lasted for a week and claimed 23 white and 15 black lives, while leaving hundreds wounded and thousands – mainly blacks – homeless.

A more dramatic clash, with black veterans taking up arms against mobs of white veterans in the nation’s capital, had occurred earlier in July, beginning on the 19th and lasting for much of a week. The news across black America was that the race had fought back in

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Negro and the Political Parties,” a year-end editorial published in January 1920.

Washington D.C. Calvin Chase’s Washington Bee at once gloated and gave notice with this front-page headline: “Yes, It Was Stopped.”

Blacks wanted an alternative to the Republican Party, he said, but “Mr. Wilson and his party have lost a golden opportunity by their policy of utter disregard of the Negro, to hasten this division. Withal, the colored people are trying to find a way out. They know that those who guide the destinies of the Republican Party are loud in their protestations of fairplay [sic] for the race, but short when it comes to performance.”

James Weldon Johnson, a contributing editor to the Age (and co-writer of “Lift Ev’ry Voice”) analyzed the two big-city explosions of violence in an Aug. 9 editorial.

“In Washington there was race prejudice almost pure and simple. During the war Washington became the Mecca of the Southerners,” he wrote. “They came up by the thousands and tens of thousands.

It was a most important part of the work of the present administration to provide and create good jobs for Southerners….[I]n a way it became a more dangerous city for Negroes than Atlanta or Memphis or Birmingham.”

Because the respected labor leader A. Philip Randolph was a member of the Socialist Party, it was making inroads among black industrial workers. Randolph told the Defender that going Socialist might lead the major parties to take blacks seriously and provide the quickest path to systemic reform.

In Johnson’s eyes, “the Chicago situation is more complex and more serious than the Washington situation” because it was economically crippling to blacks beginning to taste life beyond the oppressive South. Reacting to the Chicago riots, stockyard owners announced they would lay off 15,000 black employees, he reported. Johnson anticipated that the same antiblack sentiment “will seek to have Negroes thrown out of other lines of employment.”

He reasoned that “if Negroes voted the Socialist ticket, it would frighten the ruling powers of America, thereby forcing them to grant the demands of the Negro as a means of keeping him out of the ranks of the Socialists and holding him within the reactionary group. In other words, if the Negroes polled a million votes for the Socialist Party in 1920, a federal law against lynching would be adopted, disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow car [in interstate rail travel] would go.”

As disturbing as the urban riots were, they were dwarfed in viciousness by the massacre that took place in rural Elaine, Arkansas, beginning the night of Sept.

30, 1919. White people, livid that black sharecroppers were forming a labor union, rampaged for three days, killing more than 200 black men, women and children.

According to “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,” a 2003 PBS documentary, “their bodies [were] dumped in the Mississippi River or left to rot in the canebrake.”

By the following spring, when the Democratic Party convened in San Francisco, hardly a black delegate could be found. Even without an apparent heir to Theodore Roosevelt, the eyes of black America turned once again to the Republican Party to which he had once belonged. n E. R. Shipp is an associate professor in Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary

With no end in sight to the Great Migration that had thousands of blacks on the move, triggering backlashes from whites in the North and the South, and with neither party embracing their cause, John H. Murphy’s Afro summarized the political plight of blacks in “The

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