NASA Press photo
Walter Cronkite made me nervous.
In January 2004, I was working on ASBJ‘s coverage of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. One of my goals was to do a series of Q&As that would serve as “bridges” from one story to the next; the “Most Trusted Man in America” was a logical choice to weigh in.
I worked through CBS News and got in touch with Cronkite’s personal assistant, who warned me that the 87-year-old former anchor was almost completely deaf. She also said he was undergoing treatment for a “problem with his legs,” or as he referred to them, the “parts that are just wearing out.”
My mantra was “Speak loudly and try not to stammer.” I decided to start by asking him about growing up in the Houston area (where I grew up as well). We also talked about Nov. 22, 1963, and I had a chance to tell Cronkite briefly that my father had seen John Kennedy in Dallas on that fateful day.
At that point, I was relaxed and his whirlpool was humming, and the interview formally began. Excerpts are below, and you can find the rest (along with interviews I did with Richard Riley, John Hope Franklin, Ted Shaw, and Richard Kluger) in the “Remembering Brown” archive from the April 2004 issue.
What were you was doing at the time:
I was with CBS. I had returned just a few years before from Europe and was working in Washington at that time. Unfortunately, I was not assigned to the Supreme Court case, but we were all working together to get the repercussions and comments and turning whatever we did into a little interpretive piece.
In terms of stories, how important was Brown in 1954, and how did the other newsmen view it?
It was the dominant story of the time. There was great excitement in Washington, in our bureau at CBS. We were very sympathetic to the case, and there was great excitement that the Supreme Court had moved so deeply into this matter of racial prejudice.
The Warren decision was beautifully done, and it clearly was the effect of Thurgood Marshall. It thrilled us that the NAACP had selected a black attorney, the first to practice before the Supreme Court, to this case. It was very exciting business.
What is Brown’s legacy?
People really realized that this was the beginning of the end of the flagrant segregation in all aspects of human life. … That is the legacy. For the first time, the Supreme Court — the federal government as represented by the Supreme Court — had made a decision as broad as this regarding the rights of all people.
There’s no question that resegregation is kind of prima face backward. I think we must remember and must be aware of the fact that many, many blacks have resegregated themselves. … This raises the question to me of whether we wouldn’t have a lot more of this voluntary segregation if our educational system was working better in following the precepts of the Warren decision.
He points to a documentary he worked on several years ago on Prince George’s County, Md., a middle class, predominantly African-American suburb of Washington, D.C.
In several cases, they have started their own subdivisions, their own schools. It’s a community where blacks have had an opportunity to work in all aspects of their community’s affairs. That’s not so in many other communities of course.
The community identification of the blacks is demonstrated in this Washington suburb is a consequence of a highly educated, well-educated percentage of the black community that wants to give something back. If the blacks succeed in getting a proper education that permits them to move ahead in our society, there is something there that brings back to them a desire for their own community.
At this point, Cronkite moved into the issue of race, and he didn’t pull any punches.
Unfortunately, the Warren decision cannot legislate people’s attitudes. I still feel there is an inherent attitude among the whites, a feeling that blacks are some ways – if nothing other than socially – inferior.
That has an effect on the black reaction. If that’s the way they’re going to be, if you’re going to meet your white brothers in the marketplace, I can understand completely why the blacks’ reaction to it is, “To hell with it. We don’t have to live with you.”
Why has progress taken so long? Why, 50 years after Brown, are we still having this conversation?
Certainly in all aspects of compulsory desegregation, there was a lot of foot dragging by many communities. … I don’t think you can impose a law that’s going to make people be kind to each other. You can’t necessarily change the lifetime teaching and lifetime learning through the culture of the white community, as was the case in so much of the United States, particularly in the solid South.
After all, we had the riots that came another 10 years, 15 years after the decision. That’s because Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and other undoubtable heroes of the civil rights movement pressed for laws to be fairly administered when they weren’t. You had the attitude of the white communities in these previously heavily segregated areas — in other words, the Deep South — and the riots resulted, the assassinations took place.
When you saw the public reaction of those throughout the South, I’m convinced that the white population that had actually grown up in such a culture did not see the problem of segregation.
You grew up, as least in part, in Texas. Did you see this attitude?
I knew the attitude of my classmates. They were not mean, vicious people. But the way they talked. They would introduce you to their black servant (exaggerates voice), “George has been with us for 10 years and he’s really one of those good ole niggers.” They thought they were complimenting them, for heaven’s sake. They were offensive by inheritance, and you can’t correct that by a court decision.
I think we’re ahead of the game. It’s taking longer than everyone had hoped. In 1954, we thought that this was a revolution and it would take immediate effect across the country. Our expectations were far too great in terms of how you change public opinion.
Walter Cronkite died Friday. He will be missed.
Glenn Cook, Editor-in-Chief
