The Education of a Journalist

Jim Abbott grew up in segregation but quickly figured out that to be a newspaperman, he had to be fair to everyone.

By Phil McCausland Photos by Phillip Waller

Former Sunflower County Supervisor Carver Randle said Abbott covered both sides of a story and took pains not to favor anyone. “W e don’t want niggers on our front page.” Jim Abbott was surrounded by angry white faces, some pointing fingers, others voicing their agreement. All Abbott had wanted was a steak dinner and to meet some town leaders. He hadn’t expected an ambush.

It was 1972 and only a short time had passed since Abbott took over The Enterprise-Tocsin, Indianola’s weekly newspaper, and he’d already irritated some townfolk. All because he ran a photo of a cheerleading squad on the front page.

He’d done it before with a different squad, and that’d been fine. But there was a difference: the first cheerleaders attended the allwhite private school and this most recent squad cheered for the predominantly black public high school. Some readers weren’t too happy about black girls waving pom-poms on page one. Others weren’t happy about having black people in the newspaper at all.

Abbott didn’t back down. Born in nearby Greenwood, he was well aware of Indianola’s reputation as a segregationist stronghold. If he wanted to make The Enterprise-Tocsin a respected weekly, he knew he’d have to reckon with the sordid racial history of the city and its newspaper.

Today, it seems silly to think people might confront an editor over a photo of black cheerleaders. But this was Sunflower County, where Fannie Lou Hamer was kicked off her plantation for wanting to vote, where the White Citizens Council was founded in 1955.

Abbott, a deceptively affable Vietnam vet, refused to crumble under the pressure. At a time when most Mississippi editors steadfastly ignored news about protests and boycotts, hoping they would go away, Abbott put it all in the paper. He insisted on covering the whole community. And in time, his stubborn consistency and even-handed coverage won people over. The little weekly won no Pulitzers. But its 38 years with Abbott at the helm marked a remarkable turnaround from what it had been before. Until Abbott showed up, the paper often served to exacerbate racial tensions. When students came south for 1964’s Freedom Summer of protests and voter registration, the newspaper printed names, addresses and phone numbers of their parents. Just in case folks felt inclined to call them up and harass them. Abbott’s small staff withstood frequent complaints and a few losses of advertising, but it wound up earning numerous honors, including Abbott’s induction into the Mississippi Press Association Hall of Fame. Through it all, Abbott

was never intimidated. He understood racial intolerance. After all, he’d already had to reckon with his own demons.

In the fall of 1962, Abbott was a freshman at Ole Miss, seeking a degree in business. It was the final day of September, and students were returning from a football weekend in Jackson, having watched the Rebels whip Kentucky 14-0, and riding high on the win. But that high quickly turned to anger when they found the Lyceum surrounded by hundreds of U.S. marshals. They were there to enroll a lone black man, James Meredith.

As darkness fell and thousands of students gathered in front of the armed marshals, 18-year-old Abbott joined in the jeering of the marshals, yelling, “2-4-6-8, we don’t want to integrate.” Then as skirmishes broke out in the mob, Abbott and three friends retreated 50 yards to the old yellow-brick YMCA building to watch President John F. Kennedy’s fuzzy image flickering on a black and white TV screen. He was addressing the nation live at 8 p.m., begging Mississippi to be reasonable. But that night, few on the campus were listening.

A few minutes into Kennedy’s speech, the marshals fired tear gas canisters toward the mob in the Circle. Clouds of tear gas blew into the YMCA building. Abbott and his three buddies ran outside. Stunned that marshal has unleashed tear gas, they washed their faces from a faucet outside a nearby sorority house. White brows furrowed. White fingers folded into fists. White mouths slung insults. It was a time to show allegiances, and they weren’t going to have theirs questioned.

Over the next few hours, Abbott witnessed the full blown riot. But he and his friends kept far enough away to stay out of trouble. They left for a while to visit their fraternity house, and upon returning about 10 p.m., they heard bullets ricocheting off the science building and over their heads. They decided it had become too dangerous and retreated to their dorm rooms.

In the morning, Abbott saw exactly what happens when hate runs rampant. Torched cars smoldering in the morning mist made the idyllic Ole Miss campus look like some kind of apocalyptic wasteland. A French journalist and a local resident had been shot and killed. The university canceled classes because clouds of tear gas were seeping from the earth. Three thousand soldiers patrolled the campus in the wake of the now infamous Ole Miss riot. Before it was all over, that number increased to almost 5,000 to keep peace in a town of 6,500 and a campus of fewer than 5,000.

Two years later, in the Freedom Summer of 1964, Abbott worked for his father, a civil engineer, in Greenwood. Compiling data for a new county map meant many days at the county courthouse. During breaks, he would watch SNCC workers try to help long lines of black people register to vote. Something about it troubled him.

The sheriff and the circuit clerk were stern and dismissive. They made black folks wait outside in the broiling heat and horrendous summer downpours. Meanwhile, white people moved in and out with ease.

He just assumed that was the way things were. It wasn’t until he was sent to Vietnam that his views on race were finally challenged enough to change.

At Phu Bai, a large military base just south of the imperial city of Hue, where Marines tangled with the enemy in fierce firefights, Abbott

was put on guard duty with a black man from Chicago’s ghettoes. He told Abbott stories about home, about living in a one-bedroom apartment with his many brothers and sisters, sharing a double bed. “They actually had a way of sleeping on the bed,” Abbott recalled. “The younger ones would be on top, where their legs were overlapping.” Abbott paused for a moment. “So they wouldn’t cut off the blood flow and all.”

It wasn’t until they starting discussing race that Abbott’s views starting hitting the reset button. The last thing the soldier said clocked Abbott across the face, showed him how a lack of empathy can hide the world from a man.

“He said, ‘I know that you will go back home and you will have a nice job and you’ll belong to a country club that has a swimming pool and you’ll have a nice happy life. I will go back to the ghetto and probably won’t be able to find a job.’”

Abbott’s passive worldview was destroyed. It made him look inside. He didn’t like what he saw.

After his time in Vietnam, Abbott returned to Mississippi with a new perspective seared into his soul. He went back to Ole Miss, got a second degree, this time in journalism, and took over The Enterprise-Tocsin in 1970, swearing to cover the entire community, not just one side of it. That led him to an interrupted steak dinner with a group of angry white men. It wouldn’t be the last time people would be upset at Jim Abbott.

Abbott tried to insist on fair reporting. “Not playing any favorites,” he called it. That meant he reported everything he felt was newsworthy. Everything. Which earned him the ire of many people who wanted things kept the same.

But he stuck to his guns. No matter who or what you were, Abbott reported the news. Even when it included employees.

“I had a policy at the newspaper that if you were on staff,” Abbott said, “or you were the editor, if you get caught and you’re on the court docket, it’s going to be in boldface type.”

Over the years, Abbott’s name was boldfaced a few times: for running a stop sign, passing on a yellow line on Highway 49, another for improper parking. And people took notice.

“Jim was real good about making sure both sides were heard in his stories and that he didn’t try to slant it to his viewpoint,” said Steve Rosenthal, Indianola’s mayor. “He left that strictly for the editorials.”

All of it came to a head in the spring of 1986 – a time Abbott considers one of the most difficult of his life. The public schools in Indianola were almost entirely black. The school board was predominantly white. A veteran superintendent retired and the black community wanted a black superintendent – specifically, popular long-time black principal Robert Merritt, who had earned his PhD.

Then word leaked out that the board had secretly offered a white applicant the job before interviewing all of the candidates. They knew people might be upset, so they secretly swore on a Bible not to go back on their vote.

The black community was outraged. It formed an organization called Concerned Citizens. The group voted to boycott white businesses. Pickets appeared on downtown streets. If the town wouldn’t play

fair, black citizens would hit them where it hurt – the cash register. In a community nearly 75 percent black, a boycott could be deadly.

It lasted 33 days. Businessmen soon yearned for the old, steady ka-ching of a busy cash register.

Rosenthal owned a department store. He well remembers the power of the boycott.

“When it ended,” Rosenthal said, “I probably had $100,000 worth of Easter clothing in the layaway. Well, who wants Easter dresses 60 days after Easter?”

Eventually the white community gave in, buying out the contract of the white superintendent. Some white school board members resigned. Robert Merritt became the district’s first black superintendent.

Through it all, Abbott’s staff covered Concerned Citizens meetings and interviewed school board members, city officials and citizens. Abbott wrote editorials encouraging open communication and a biracial solution rather than continued fighting.

“Jim did a good job,” said Carver Randle, Indianola lawyer and former NAACP chief. “And I think most people respected him because he wouldn’t just pick one segment of the community and expose them, but anybody that he thought was not doing what they should have been doing.” It’s tough to cover both sides honestly and keep friends along the way, especially when it involves race, especially in a small community. If you’re honest about everybody, eventually they might all sour a little bit. Randall saw this happen to Abbott.

“For a while, he was very unpopular in the black and white community,” he said. “And newspapers have to experience that if you’re going to be up front and unbiased in your reporting.”

Abbott retired in 2008, selling the weekly to Emmerich Newspapers.

He was already involved in a new project – the town’s B.B. King Museum. He served on its board for seven years and helped with its founding and promotion. The editor who brought even handed news coverage to the birthplace of the Citizens Council was now throwing himself at one of the first major projects in Indianola that black and white people had worked on together – a watershed moment in local race relations. The museum became the envy of the Delta, both for its powerful exhibits and its model of racial cooperation. Eventually he cycled off the board, but he kept his hand in. He is often called upon to take honored guests through the museum. He has the tour down to a science.

But his identity is still very much tied to the paper. One of his projects includes organizing the hundreds of photos he took over the years for The Enterprise-Tocsin. He started with the 1970 editions and he’s made it up to 2002. Soon he’ll be finished. Now he toys with writing a book about his experiences during the boycott and at Ole Miss and Vietnam, but first he wants to take some meaningful travel time with his wife.

There’s another world out there, beyond the Delta. One that has unknown troubles and diverse terrains. They’ve already gone on a few trips, but now he wants a real change. He’s thinking mountains – the Austrian Alps.

“It’s something different,” he said. Design by Kristen Ellis

“I think most people respected him because he wouldn’t just pick one segment of the community and expose them, but anybody that he thought was not doing what they should have been doing.”

– CARVER RANDLE

After 20 Years of meetings in the White House, Henry Espy is content to dig graves with a backhoe and help care for the dead.

By Cady Herring

t had been a tough day at the office, so

Clarksdale Mayor Henry Espy looked forward to relaxing at home with a cold beer. He settled into his favorite chair, sipped a little brew, then tensed when he heard a knock on the door. “Oh

God,” he thought. “What now?” When he opened the door, a lady with a newborn baby stood on his front step. “Mr. Espy?”“Yeah, can I help you?”“Could you tell somebody to turn my lights on?”

She had come home from the hospital after giving birth, only to discover the city had turned off her electricity. She hurried to pay the bill, money in hand, but it was just a few minutes before 5 p.m., and they told her they couldn’t send someone to turn on the juice that close to quitting time. “She opened her hand with the baby in her arms and showed me the money,” said Espy.