Race and Local Television News: The Emergence of Black Journalists in New Orleans

Abstract

WDSU-TV, the first New Orleans broadcast station in the city to hire a Black reporter and thus racially integrate, claimed that its liberal-leaning owner, Edgar Stern Jr., independently decided to hire Bill Rouselle in 1968, rather than being influenced to do so by federal entities and other factors. Through archival materials, newspaper content, federal reports, and exclusive in-depth interviews of journalists of the period, this study argues to the contrary: federal instigation, a decline in the local white population, and competition among New Orleans TV stations preceded integration at WDSU. While WDSU’s editorials advocated for integration in the early 1960s, years elapsed before the station integrated. Management hired Rouselle because it wanted to televise an African American face, not Black voices. Nevertheless, local Black television reporters instilled hope and pride in the city’s Black community.

Notes

1 “Media Charged with Hiring Bias,” Broadcasting: The Businessweekly of Television and Radio, January 22, 1968, 30.

2 Bala James Baptiste, Race and Radio: Pioneering Black Broadcasters in New Orleans (Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 2019).

3 Ibid.

4 Michael Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

5 Dawson, 1994, 77.

6 William “Bill” Rouselle, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 24, 2009; Michael Dejoie, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 24, 2009.

7 Rouselle, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, September 26, 2019.

8 Rouselle, March 24, 2009.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.; Jerry Romig, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 26, 2009.

11 John L. Andriot, ed., Population Abstract of the United States, vol. 1 (McLean, VI: Andriot Associates, 1983), 321; Richard Campanella, Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in the Present Day (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 2002), 152.

12 Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (New York: Verso, 2011); Gonzalez and Torres, How Long Must We Wait? The Fight for Racial and Ethnic Equality in the American News Media, an article published by the Unity journalists of diversity group (2004).

13 Fred Carroll, Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017). “New Challenges from Every Side: Blacks File Against WMAL-TV as first on list; Affluent Whites go for WTAR-TV’s channel,” Broadcasting, September 8, 1969; Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: Summary Report, PDF file, www.eisenhowerfoundation.org, accessed March 24, 2019, 385; Woody Klein, “Survey Shows News Media Working on Racial Tension,” Editor and Publisher 102, no. 3 (1969) https://archive.org/stream/sim_editor-publisher_1969-01-18_102_3/sim_editor-publisher_1969-01-18_102_3_djvu.txt, accessed December 10, 2021. Pamela Newkirk, Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

14 Kay Mills, “Changing Channels: The Civil Rights Case that Transformed Television,” Prologue Magazine 35, no. 3 (Fall 2004), https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/fall/channels-1.html, accessed December 10, 2021.

15 Jannette L. Dates and William Barlow, Split Image: African Americans in the Mass, Media, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1993), 419.

16 Newkirk, 73.

17 Jessie Camey Smith, Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-Breaking and Pioneering Historical Events, 3rd ed. (Canton, Mich.: Visible Ink Press, 2012).

18 Libby Lewis, The Myth of Post-Racialism in Television News (New York: Routledge, 2016).

19 Carroll, 181.

20 Gwyneth Mellinger, Chasing Newsroom Diversity: From Jim Crow to Affirmative Action (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 52.

21 Klein, 1969.

22 Brianna L. Savoca, “Leon Bibb: A Pioneer in Ohio Broadcast Journalism,” Master’s Thesis (Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University, 2010).

23 Linda R. White, The Impact of Minority TV News Directors on Ratings, Master’s Thesis (Ball State University, May 2018).

24 “New Challenges,” Broadcasting, September 8, 1969, 25; Gonzalez and Torres, 2011.

25 Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 171–172; Lerone Bennett Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, 6th ed. (New York: Penguin, 1993), 423–424; Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 215–216; John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994), 514–515.

26 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 2019, 385.

27 Ibid.

28 Newkirk, 73; Federal Communications Commission Reports, vol. 13 (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1970), 775.

29 Romig (2009).

30 Susan Ware, ed., Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2004).

31 Quote taken from Romig interview (2009); Edward Hass, DeLesseps S. Morrison and the Image of Reform: New Orleans Politics, 1946–1961 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986).

32 Robert L. Crain, et al., “School Desegregation in New Orleans: A Comparative Study of the Failures of Social Control,” an unpublished research paper, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, May 1966, p. 28.

33 Ibid.

34 Romig, (2009).

35 Cheryl V. Cunningham, “The Desegregation of Tulane University,” Master’s Thesis (University of New Orleans, December 1982), 17.

36 “Philadelphia, Mississippi,” WDSU editorial, June 30, 1964, A.P. Tureaud Papers, 1798–1977, Series 3, Box 16, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans; “The Voting Rights Bill -1,” WDSU editorial, April 2, 1965, A.P. Tureaud papers, Series 3, Box 16.

37 “Philadelphia” (1964).

38 Edward F. Haas, Mayor Victor H. Schiro: New Orleans in Transition, 1961–1970 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014), 251.

39 “The Voting Rights Bill,” WDSU editorial, April 2, 1965.

40 Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 387.

41 “A Bi-Racial Committee for New Orleans,” WDSU editorial, August 8, 1968, A.P. Tureaud papers, Series 3, Box 16.

42 Rouselle, March 24, 2009.

43 Ibid.

44 Rouselle, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, April 1, 2016.

45 Brian Ward, Radio and the Struggle of Civil Rights in the South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), 341.

46 “RTNDA Throws Counter-punch,” Broadcasting: The Businessweekly of Television and Radio, March 11, 1968, 60.

47 Bennett, 432.

48 “22 Firebomb Incidents Occur Here During the Night,” New Orleans States-Item, April 6, 1968, 1.

49 Kalamu ya Salaam, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 27, 2009.

50 Rouselle, interview, by author, April 1, 2009.

51 Rouselle, March 24, 2009.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Chakula cha Jua, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 1, 2011.

56 Rouselle, interview, September 27, 2019.

57 Ibid.; Michael Dejoie, interview, March 24, 2009.

58 Dejoie, interview.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.; Yussuf Simmons, “TV News Icon Furnell Chatman Retires After 35 Years,” Los Angeles Sentinel, Jan. 8, 2009.

62 Dejoie (2009).

63 Rouselle, (2009); Frank Gagnard, “Notebook on the Square,” Times-Picayune, Nov. 7, 1967; Jerry Perry, “Amusements, TV, Radio,” States-Item, n.d.; Baptiste, 126.

64 Dawson, 1994.

65 Sally-Ann Roberts, interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 26, 2009.

66 Willie P. Wilson Jr., interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 23, 2009.

67 Ibid.

68 Warren A. Bell Jr., interview by author, tape recording, New Orleans, March 25, 2009.

69 Ibid.

70 Roberts.

71 “Media Charged with Hiring Bias,” Broadcasting: The Businessweekly of Television and Radio, January 22, 1968, 30.

72 Ibid.

73 Dominic Massa, New Orleans Television (Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2008).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bala James Baptiste

Bala James Baptiste, Ph.D., is the author of Race and Radio: Pioneering Black Broadcasters in New Orleans, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2019. He is a professor of mass communication and chair of the Division of Communications at Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama. Baptiste earned the doctorate at Indiana University. He chairs the African American and Civil Rights Caucus of the Radio Preservation Task Force of the National Recording Preservation Board of the US Library of Congress. The Journal of Radio and Audio Media, New Review of Film and Television Studies, and Louisiana History published his research that intersects Black people, mass media, and history.