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Abstract
A 1968 complaint by a black, blue-collar worker, Wendall A. Payne, at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, led to a federal appeals court in 1976 issuing a consent decree that required the newspaper, one of the major dailies in the South, to hire more black employees including journalists. At other dailies nationally in the late 1960s to early 1970s, racial integration occurred in the newsroom because newspapers were affected by provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the need for black reporters to cover urban uprisings, the Kerner Commission report, and/or a “moral imperative.” Notwithstanding, litigation was not necessary to induce the dailies to hire black full-time reporters. The Picayune, however, required pressure from Payne’s complaint that led to an EEOC employment discrimination lawsuit against the paper. Subsequently, the Picayune diverted from its white-centered trajectory and traveled on a path leading to racial inclusiveness.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The EEOC did not make available to the public digitized records, reports, or hearings of the commission’s relevant actions during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
2 The date that Dwight Ott became a full-time Picayune reporter was not determined.
3 On January, 24, 1978, the U.S. District Court declared the original case was finally and officially dismissed.
4 An EEOC representative informed this author by telephone in 2019 that the commission released to the author all records in its possession concerning the Picayune case. Through interviews with black Picayune journalists and analysis of bylined stories, the author determined the number and names of the newspaper’s African-American reporters as well as the dates of their first and last published articles.