I will admit it: I have not always been kind in my coverage and criticism of the Lexington Herald-Leader. But sometimes an editorial just takes the cake!
By the Herald-Leader Editorial Board | June 25, 2021 | 8:33 AM EDT | Updated: 12:28 PM EDT
In 2004, the Herald-Leader wrote a series of stories about how Lexington’s newspapers had not covered the city’s civil rights movement. The stories described the historic practice of numerous Southern papers that ignored protest in their own backyards because their leaders thought that by doing so, they could minimize the protesters’ impact or make them disappear altogether.
There was much material never before described in these pages that led to many other stories, such as the integration of Rupp Arena, Keeneland’s segregated bleachers, numerous Black students whose achievements were ignored, or the teenage Calvert McCann, whose many previously unpublished photographs documented so many important moments of the struggle here.
1976-77 University of Kentucky mens basketball team.
“The integration of Rupp Arena”? Rupp Arena opened in 1976, many years after integration. If the editors are referring to the integration of UK’s basketball teams, there were several black players on the 1976-77 UK team, including Jack Givens, James Lee, Larry Johnson, Truman Claytor, Lavon Williams, Dwane Casey, and Merion Haskins. This was not the first integrated UK team.
But naturally, there is always more to this story, and a reader recently pointed out an entry in the University of Kentucky’s Notable Kentucky African Americans database on Helen Caise Wade, the brave 16-year-old who integrated the Fayette County Public Schools when she attended summer school at Lafayette High School in 1955. The entry notes that the Lexington Herald, the morning paper, reported Caise’s entry, her parents and her home address.
Emphasis in the original.
Newspapers today do not normally report specific addresses, but tend to put them down as block numbers. The editorial makes it sound as though the Herald was trying to get young Miss Caise and her family targeted.
But the obvious question is: what was the Herald’s stylebook at the time? Was this exceptional, or did it follow standard procedure at the time?
Oh, wait, we already have our answer, from the story itself:
Database founder and UK librarian Reinette Jones said newspapers frequently printed people’s addresses back then.
So, the criticism of the Herald’s, and Leader’s, coverage is to judge journalism in 1955 by the standards of 2021. Of course, the Editorial Board apologized, but they were apologizing for treating the Caise family just the same as they treated other families.
The Herald-Leader wishes to apologize to Mrs. Wade. Although hardly anyone who worked at the papers in 1955 is still alive, we think it’s important to recognize the harmful ways that the white power structure as represented in a newspaper did and still can harm marginalized communities.
What, are the Editorial Board apologizing for the people working there 66 years ago not being 21st century #woke?
“So, the thing that bothers me is not only the published home address, but the articles gave a minor’s name and other personal information about her, along with her parents’ names and occupations,” Jones said. “There was a disregard and lack of caring on the part of the newspapers for the safety of this African American teenager and her family, regardless of whether that act was intentional or unintentional. It was left to the devices of the Caise family members to ensure that Helen would get to the school and back without being harmed.”
Did the newspapers not do that all the time, regardless of the race of the subject of the story?
UK historian Gerald Smith, whose 2002 book on Black Lexington and research into Lexington’s civil rights protests in the 1960s guided the 2004 series, was more critical of the Herald and the Leader, which consolidated under corporate ownership in 1983.
“Yes, it was that malicious,” he said. “It was another form of intimidation.”
This is poor scholarship. Dr Smith is assuming a malicious mindset on the part of someone who apparently followed then-current journalistic standards, someone he did not ask, because he is judging it by the standards of the 21st century.
The Board complained, in their first paragraph, that “The stories described the historic practice of numerous Southern papers that ignored protest in their own backyards because their leaders thought that by doing so, they could minimize the protesters’ impact or make them disappear altogether.” But they later wrote:
After she went to Lafayette, her father’s business was destroyed, with one client asking John Caise if he was related to Helen, then firing him.
Reading those two together — and this is part of the reason I prefer news in print, because I can go back and take these connections — it would seem as though it would have been better for the Herald and the Leader not to have covered the story at all. Mr Caise, a plastering contractor, would probably not have been fired, nor seen his business fail, had the newspapers not covered the story at all.
The Lexington Herald and the Lexington Leader were part of the community in the 1950s, and it is probable that the writers and editors who worked there then reasonably reflected the norms of the community. They probably did their jobs as they had been trained to do their jobs. The notion that today’s Editorial Board can judge them by today’s standards is as laughable as the #woke trying to change the names of schools names after American Presidents who used to own slaves.
Oh, wait, that’s happening, isn’t it?
Even more laughable is the idea that the Board can apologize for people at least long retired or, more probably, having gone to their eternal rewards.
