Guide to the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education Oral History Collection

Oral history interviews

Physical Description: 29 VHS videotapes

Series Scope and Content Summary

Consists of 29 oral history interviews with prominent black journalists about their experiences and struggles working in the news media in the 1960s-1970s.

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically by last name of interviewee.

Box 1

Interview with Leandra Abbot 2001

Description

Interview with Leandra Abbot, who in late 1960’s was one of three black women to break the color line at Newsweek magazine.

Box 1

Interview with Robert L. Allen 2003-01-06

view online item

Description

Interview with longtime activist, journalist and professor, Robert L. Allen, senior editor of The Black Scholar and co-editor of Brotherman, the odyssey of Black men in America, discussing growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, his work as a journalist covering the civil rights and Black power movements in the 1960s, the formation of the Bay Area Black Journalists, COINTELPRO, and his work as an editor for The Black Scholar.

Box 1

Interview with Ed Bradley 2001

Description

Interview with veteran CBS news reporter Ed Bradley. Prior to joining CBS News he was a reporter for WCBS in New York — joined CBS in 1971 as stringer, worked his way from radio news to television news. He also covered the Vietnam War and was a longtime correspondent on the television news program 60 Minutes.

Box 1

Interview with Audreen Buffalo 2001

Description

Interview with Audreen Buffalo, one of the first African American journalists to work at the women’s magazine Redbook and later worked at Essence magazine and Time, Inc.

Box 1

Interview with Mary Ellen Butler 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with Mary Ellen Butler, a reporter and editor for the Oakland Tribune. Before joining the Tribune, she was a reporter for the Washington Star, the Oakland Post and the Berkeley Daily Gazette. Butler received a Congressional Fellowship from the American Political Science Association in Washington D.C. where she wrote speeches, press releases and position papers for Representative Shirley Chisholm and Senator Alan Cranston.

Box 1

Interview with Earl Caldwell 2001-06-07

view online item

Description

Interview with investigative journalist Earl Caldwell. Earl Caldwell worked his way up from small newspaper to midsize and finally to the New York Times and New York Daily News. While covering the Black Panthers for the New York Times, he stood against the FBI and the Nixon Administration refusing to disclose confidential information about his sources in the Panthers. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in the enactment of individual states’ shield laws protecting reporters’ sources. He was the only reporter present when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. He served as director and oral historian of the Maynard Institute’s oral history project.

Box 1

Interview with Belva Davis 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with veteran news anchor and reporter Belva Davis. Belva Davis was hired to replace television news anchor Nancy Reynolds, on KPIX-TV, San Francisco's CBS affiliate, making her the first female African American television reporter on the West Coast. Davis hosted and helped to create "All Together Now", one of the country's first prime-time public affairs programs to focus on ethnic communities. In 1977, she left KPIX to work at the PBS affiliate in San Francisco, KQED. She anchored "A Closer Look" and then "Evening Edition" from 1977 to 1981, then worked as anchor and urban affairs -specialist for KRON 4.

Box 1

Interview with Joy Elliot 2001

Description

Interview with journalist Joy Elliot, the first black woman to work at a wire service, first at the Associated Press and subsequently at Reuters where she covered nine assemblies at the UN.

Box 1

Interview with C. Gerald Fraser 2001

Description

Interview with veteran journalist C. Gerald Fraser. He started as a deskman at New York Daily News for four years, covering metropolitan affairs and the performing and visual arts at the New York Times for twenty-four years. His work at the Times included columns on books, television, and New York places of interest. He was also a founding member of Black Perspective, the 60's black journalist organization formed in New York.

Box 1

Interview with George Goodman 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with reporter George Goodman, who after getting his start working for the Associated Press during the 1965 Los Angeles riots went on to work for the Ebony magazine, Look magazine and the New York Times.

Box 1

Interview with Al Harvin 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with reporter Al Harvin, who after getting his start working for the Associated Press during the 1965 Los Angeles riots went on to work for the New York Times for over 25 years.

Box 1

Interview with Charles Hobson 2001

Description

Interview with Charles Hobson, producer of the WNEW’s “Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant," a news magazine highlighting varied aspects of the neighborhoods black community, Black Journal," "Like it is," a documentary style news magazine, and "The Africans," a nine-part series that aired on PBS stations in 1986.

Box 1

Interview with Charlayne Hunter-Gault 2001

Description

Interview with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first African American to work at the New Yorker and a reporter for the McNeil Lehrer News Hour, CNN, and NPR.

Box 1

Interview with Jane Tillman Irving 2001

Description

Reporter Jane Tillman Irving discusses getting her start working for the school paper at New York City College in the 1960s.

Box 1

Interview with Lenore Jenkins-Allen 2001

Description

Interview with journalist Lenore Jenkins-Allen, a reporter at Newsweek during the 1960s where she interviewed notable figures such as Roy Wilkins, Mohammed Ali, Pearl Bailey, Vernon Jordan and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Box 1

Interview with Jerri Lange 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with journalist Jerri Lange, a popular television personality throughout the Bay Area, who has worked as a television host for several San Francisco stations including KGO, KQED and KBHK.

Box 1

Interview with Claude Lewis 2001

Description

Interview with sports writer Claude Lewis, a journalist at Newsweek Magazine and a key organizer of black journalists on the East Coast.

Box 1

Interview with Austin Long Scott 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with Austin Long Scott. In 1961, Austin Scott became the first African American full-time reporter hired by The Associated Press. He was based in Sacramento covering the California Legislature for three years, then in 1964 the Associated Press moved him to New York City. He covered the Harlem riots that year, and then reported on similar urban uprisings in city after city over the next five years. By late 1969, as the Associated Press' senior black reporter, he covered most of the nation's major African American urban uprisings, except for Watts. He also traveled extensively in the South, beginning in 1965, to make periodic assessments of the civil rights movement, of efforts to end hunger, and of other efforts to bring social change.

Box 1

Interview with Nancy Hicks Maynard 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with journalist Nancy Hicks Maynard. In 1967, she started at the Washington Post and was the only black woman covering news. She moved to on to work at the New York Times where she was the first black woman reporter and covered many civil rights stories at universities. In 1983, she and her husband, Bob Maynard, purchased the Oakland Tribune, becoming the first Black owners of a major metropolitan newspaper in the US. They also co-founded the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in 1977 in Oakland, California.

Box 1

Interview with Marquita Poole-Eckert 2001

Description

Interview with broadcast journalist Marquita Poole-Eckert, producer of ABC's “Like It Is” and a senior producer at CBS Sunday Morning.

Box 1

Interview with Dennis Richmond 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with television news anchor Dennis Richmond. Richmond covered San Francisco Bay Area news for KTVU for over 30 years as a nightly news anchor.

Box 1

Interview with Gil Scott 2001

Description

Interview with reporter Gil Scott, a journalist for the Associated Press and the Christian Science Monitor.

Box 1

Interview with Robert Terrell 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with reporter and professor Robert Terrell. Terrell was a reporter for the New York Post during the turbulent black power movement and later became a professor at California State University East Bay.

Box 1

Interview with Wallace Terry 2001

Description

Interview with author and journalist Wallace Terry. As a student, Terry became the first African American editor-in-chief of Brown University's Daily Herald. He went on to work at the Washington Post covering the Vietnam War and later wrote the book, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War (1984), which served as a basis for the 1995 movie Dead Presidents.

Box 1

Interview with Melba Tolliver 2001

Description

Interview with news anchor Melba Tolliver. She was hired as secretary at ABC in news division and was asked to fill in as a new anchor during a strike at the station becoming the first black woman in US to anchor a network news show.

Box 1

Interview with Mel Watkins 2001

Description

Interview with editor and journalist Mel Watkins. Watkins served as an editor and writer at the New York Times Sunday Book Review between 1964-1985 and has written extensively on the African American performers and comedy.

Box 2

Interview with Hollie West 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with journalist Hollie West. West worked as a reporter at the Oakland Tribune, the Associated Press’ San Francisco Bureau, and the Washington Post.

Box 2

Interview with Ben Williams 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with reporter Ben Williams. He was the first African American reporter at the San Francisco Examiner when he was hired in 1962. When he was hired in 1966 by KPIX Channel 5, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, he was the first black reporter to be hired as a television news reporter in the Bay Area.

Box 1

Interview with Valena Williams 2001

view online item

Description

Interview with newspaper columnist and broadcast journalist Valena Williams. She worked as a news analyst for WTAM (NBC), a station manager for KQED, and was a lecturer in journalism at the University of California Berkeley.

Collection Contents