The Washington Post's first Black woman reporter Dorothy Butler Gilliam discusses her book "Trailblazer" and her ongoing fight to make the media look more like America.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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so much here? This is one of those stories that,
genuinely hit me so hard because it feels like you have lived through
some of the most seminal moment in american history, and you will also reporting on its you. You worked for fifty years in this business. What do you think was the boy
This change that you saw in your time in journalism as the first african american woman working at the Washington Post think the biggest change was after the urban uprisings of the sixtys. When they,
the current commission, which was the commission that was named by the president, said the media had in many ways contributed to the fact that the that the urban riots occurred, and that was because they had not integrated their importing and the editing staffs and in many ways they said they would just showing us America only through white eyes. So I started at the post in nineteen sixty one when I went back and nineteen seventy two. It was different because there were more reporters of color rights, more females, but still
Was very white male dominated you came into this world at a time when it was just something that did not happen. You walked into a newsroom where there were only two other reporters were black. You were the first african american woman in the space and reading the book. That is one of the I mean just the most harrowing passages where they did. They had a policy of not reporting when black people were murdered. One edits even called those
the deaths that shouldn't be reported? How do you even begin to work in that kind of environment, and did you help the editors understand why it was crucial to report all news I tried to help them
I think the way I begin working in that environment this, because Doktor Martin Luther king was beginning to say two young black people go into why corporations and sale so part. I felt like I was almost part of the freedom movement by going in be coming. The first african american woman with Washington
I didn't think I was a trailblazer at that point. I just was doing the job that I love I had had for years in the black press and black press has been very important in Amerika, both in terms of reporting on civil rights, but in government going places were white. Reporters wouldn't go wrong or white newspapers go so that experience also have to pay
hear me for my work at the Washington Post. One of the first stories that I remember a lot was when I went to the University of Mississippi as part of the team from the post to cover the integration of all miss, and that was the most horrendous thing you can imagine, because Mississippi was one of those places where it was a lynching state right. It was the heart of segregation and the university was like this bastion of white supremacy, so it was chaotic on the campus. But what hurt, in addition, was that I had no place that I could get a room because they didn't have hotels for blackmail
So I slept in a black fuel home and a funeral home yeah. I slept with the dead Trevor this a show in saying that you have lived through that time. It I'm I'm honestly fascinated to know in that time. When this was happening, we, you optimistic. Did you think
you would see America change or was the resistance, chew integration so strong that you thought it would last forever. The integration was so strong that I never thought I would see a black president, while that was a huge step forward, run many ways, but of course, with America it can have be liberal,
and then it can swing, deal conservatism and you see what we have now. I see what we have now
Do you will you
put it on and on so many stories, and your inclusion in the new version was powerful because it really felt felt like when you read the book. You live through two of really the most important areas:
american history, it in modern history, definitely, and that was women's movement for equal rights and
lack people's movement for civil rights and what
the two did you feel like headlong momentum when you were in them. Did you feel like all this is going to happen? This one won't or did feel like both would just moving forward. It felt that the likes of freedom, riders and the freedom that called the whole civil rights Movement Freedom Movement is, it felt like it was going to open doors for so many other people rights, because after the civil rights Movement
did the black power era. That's when Glory Asylum wrote her article that said after black power women power
right, and so after the women power, it's the blacks
where the pioneering minority, and so after women
our then you had the oppression against gay people, rightly being really looked at and studied and acknowledged. Then you had the oppression against the disabled, so its many ways it's the black movement. I think that was the most
important movement, because all people all over the world were singing. We shall overcome. You know in right, China, all around the world, people who had been oppressed were saying if that happened in Amerika. You know why cannot happen here, it's so powerful when you use,
about. How? When you first that the post, your mission was not to be reported that focused on black issues, but just a report of weak sell. You didn't once we pigeonhole as a black reporter, but then you came to realize that it was crucial for you to take up that mantle and reports on black issues. Why do you think it's so important for mainstream media to look more like actual America and not just have the voice of predominantly white men? It's because
because you can't really talk about a community that you don't in some way represent. The two
in some way. I know that you don't
some way have more than a studio tight, a notion of what it's all about and the cause with
White Supremacy in America that whole narrative has also been accompanied by an anti black narrative rights and very often that's been since the beginning. This is twenty nineteen we African Americans are black. People have been in America four hundred years. We were here or year before the Mayflower, but two and a half centuries of that was the era of slavery right and then at the era of Jim Crow, so or segregation near shall yeah so the whole feeling that this is this whole anti black narrative that has been a part of the DNA, almost Erika as much as white supremacy that has has not really been acknowledged, is been kind of glossed over and you pay attention to her
you know the the violence that violence, but get yes. But in terms of what motivated the lot of it is about poverty, you know poverties, very violent and and, as you are saying in this segment with the billion airs, you know is very real, what's happening in this country and its been happening for awhile fifty years of writing fifty years of finding ways to report stories even in spaces where you once aloud, I mean one of the most shocking and I find funny at the same time stories of when you talked about how, when you yourself and colleagues would go to marches, you would have to disguise yourselves because you couldn't be journalists in.
Public as black people, you would dressed up as as clergy you dressed up as priests and and and so forth, and nuns and and you would hide typewriters under your clothing, which I didn't even know how they fit
but. But but when you look at America today, how do you find that balance? For yourself of both where America has come from and where America still needs to go, ok first actually say that those reporters who wrapped there oh royal typewriters, but that this in old clothes rights when they went to the south because they didn't want the white shares to arrest them while and so they they would also disguise themselves, is ministers in their carried bibles under their arms, and so that was a way of trying to get to the story.
And knowing that they couldn't go as reporters, but where I see things today, I think it's the time when media is more important than ever. It was. It was very difficult when the president started talking about fake news. It was very difficult because you know those of us who care
in the end, the legacy media we knew about all of the issues of ethics that we had to to adhere to in order to be hired by the Washington Post and in order to work there, we knew that we didn't take. Gifts
any body. We knew that we had always pay our own way
knew that we had studied in colleges and universities and so to have the our whole process dismiss this fake news was not only detrimental to the U S, but it was detrimental internationally because, whatever we say about the faults of America, it still has been the bastion of democracy, and so when you have something as as crucial, but you know as freedom of the press rights being denigrated by the top officials in the land. It has a very early stage,
lasting effect in the whole world. I could genuinely taught you four hours, but luckily I have the book to keep me company. I thank you so much for being on the show is available now surely passionate historic Dorothy, but the guinean everybody daily,
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Transcript generated on 2021-05-02.