EEOC vs. the Times-Picayune
Blue-Collar Complaint Precedes Colorized Newsroom
Wendall A. Payne, a blue-collar worker at the Times-Picayune, began complaining in the late 1960s that management at the New Orleans newspaper discriminated against him and other black employees, as well as those who sought work at the morning daily. Payne contended that the Picayune maintained discriminatory policies wherein the paper only hired black people for low-paying, manual labor jobs, and excluded African Americans from the high-paying positions (Times-Picayune, 1973). The complaint also said the newspaper segregated employees by race in the breakroom and other plant facilities. Payne’s complaint about racial discrimination applied throughout the plant. He did not specifically mention the newsroom.
Nevertheless, management dismissed Payne’s concerns. On June 10, 1968, he went to the New Orleans office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, talked with an agency representative concerning his experiences at the paper, and filed a complaint alleging that the company illegally practiced employment discrimination against black employees and African-American applicants. As a remedy, Payne wanted the Picayune to immediately begin hiring more black people, promoting black employees to higher-level positions, and compensating them at the same rate as the company paid white workers. He also wanted the newspaper to retroactively pay current and former black employees a lump sum equivalent to the amount that the paper would have paid them had the Picayune assigned African Americans to jobs and compensated them the same as their white counterparts. Additionally, Payne’s remedy included the company providing black employees with fringe benefits, training, and career development (U.S. District Court, n.d.; Times-Picayune, 1973).
Payne’s complaint sought an end to racial discrimination in employment throughout the newspaper. This study, however, more narrowly focused on the Picayune’s racial integration of its newsroom and noted that its diversity and inclusiveness process differed from other newspapers. Typically, white dailies that integrated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, did so because of belated adherence to provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the arrival of the EEOC in 1965. Later the papers were influenced to integrate because of the urban uprisings and findings of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, popularly known as the Kerner Commission (Mellinger, 2008; Civil Disorders, n.d.; Klein, 1969). Still, American dailies did not racially integrate their newsrooms because they loss an EEOC challenge or were forced by a court order. To explore this topic, the author analyzed documents produced by the EEOC, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. The author also interviewed and incorporated in the study the relevant memories of black eyewitnesses and whites who were employed at the paper during the research period.
The author further surveyed content published in the Times-Picayune and the Louisiana Weekly. Background information concerning Payne was virtually non-existent as well as reasons he filed the complaint when he did. Despite the paucity of details, a Louisiana Weekly article published April 6, 1968, provided some insight on a possible influence. The article mentioned that the NAACP, at its recent conference in New Orleans, sent delegates to the Picayune to protest the paper’s racially discriminatory practices. Among areas of contention were: hiring, reporting, editorializing, and advertising. Earlier during the conference, the civil rights organization revealed provisions of a resolution that mirrored the Kerner Commission report. President Lyndon B. Johnson empaneled the Kerner Commission to study the causes of widespread urban riots in 1967 and to find solutions to the problems. Part of the explanation was that the news media failed to hire black journalists and equitably cover African-American issues. An NAACP resolution followed the Kerner report’s lead. The resolution read:
Therefore, be it resolved that (1) Media shall be urged by all available means to recruit, train, and employ Negroes in every available position, including management. (2) Discriminatory advertising, whether for jobs and housing or by businesses which practice racial discrimination, be eliminated. (3) Unnecessary racial identification of Negroes in news coverage shall be stopped (Louisiana, 1968, p. 7).
The resolution incorporated problems with the Picayune’s content and hiring practice, similar to the Kerner report that was released two months earlier on February 29, 1968. Kerner urged the news media to hire full-time African-American reporters who were familiar with the affairs of black people, particularly in urban areas. The NAACP convention sought a unique concession from the newspaper. The delegation that went to the Picayune also demanded that its managers and editors regularly meet with the group’s representatives and discuss the black community’s concerns.
This study explored the eight years from 1968, when Payne filed his complaint, to 1976, when a federal court of appeals ordered the Picayune to adhere to the terms of a consent decree. Although five years elapsed between Payne’s official complaint and the EEOC’s lawsuit, this study argues that the Times-Picayune hired its first full-time black journalist three years after Payne’s complaint. The initial complaint led to a court order that compelled the newspaper to bring aboard African Americans in all departments of the paper. Payne filed his allegations during a period within which an assassin murdered the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., massive urban riots occurred, the Kerner report surfaced, President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1968 Civil Rights bill, and the NAACP protested at the Picayune’s office.
A single newspaper is the focus of the study because it allows for a thick description of events that preceded the daily’s veer from its trajectory of Caucasian centeredness and toward racial inclusiveness. Caucasian centeredness is a construct that represents white exclusivity, in this case in the professional workplace. The theoretical concept called marginalization explains Caucasian centeredness. Marginalization is a social process in which the white elite of a system, organization, or society excludes black people and members of other racial or ethnic groups (Herbst, 1994). It reinforces the power of white decision-makers to control or silence opposition voices and keep them outside of the narrative. Among its purposes is to prohibit diverse participation in meaningful activity and allow the elite to reserve opportunities and privileges for individuals or social groups who are perceived as acceptable. Just as insidious, marginalization limits opposition ideas and divergent issues from entering the public sphere. The Picayune marginalized black people before 1971, the year the paper hired Dwight Ott as a part-time newspaper journalist who several months later became the city’s first black full-time reporter.
Literature review
Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres in News for all the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media in 2011 purported that the American media historically perpetuated racial discrimination against African-American journalists by failing to hire black people and, when they did, refusing promotions to decision-making positions, and publishing content that depicted people of color negatively. Gonzalez and Torres suggested that black people’s engagement in social movements in the mid-1960s influenced the federal government to enact laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibited racial discrimination in employment and would establish the EEOC. Urban unrest in the late 1960s also influenced newspapers and other mass media industries to integrate. The authors, however, did not indicate an EEOC complaint about discriminatory hiring practices or a racial discrimination lawsuit led to the integration of a newsroom at a major American newspaper (Gonzalez & Torres, 2011). This study argues differently and fills the void.
In 2020 in Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, Pamela Newkirk contended that white publishers and editors failed to establish an environment at their publications that treated black and white employees equally in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To combat instances of the problems, in 1972, seven African-American reporters at the Washington Post filed a complaint with the EEOC alleging that the paper engaged in racial discrimination in employment, story assignments, promotions, and employee compensation. Similarly, black journalists at the New York Times filed a class action lawsuit to resolve related problems. Newkirk’s study differed from this analysis. The black complainants Newkirk referred to were existing employees of the Post and Times. At the time of Payne’s complaint, the Times-Picayune’s newsroom was exclusively white. The black plaintiffs at the Post dropped their lawsuit because of mounting legal fees while the Times’s journalists agreed to a settlement in 1979 (Newkirk, 2000). In both cases, the legal action against the Post and Times came after the newspapers hired black reporters, unlike the Picayune which faced discrimination charges before it racially integrated its newsroom.
In 2017, Fred Carroll published Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the twentieth Century. He surmised that the Kerner Commission’s admonishment of the press led decision-makers at mainstream publications in the late 1960s and early 1970s to begin to hire black people to work as journalists. Carroll suggested that the industry moved “tepidly” toward integrating their newsrooms (Carroll, p. 12).
The commission’s findings prompted public hand-wringing among white editors who moved grudgingly in the 1970s to repair their reputations and flawed news coverage mostly by heeding the recommendations to hire more black journalists (p. 181).
Carroll’s discussion is cogent; however, he points to the Kerner Commission as the key factor associated with resolutions to race-related problems in hiring and reporting within news organizations. This author’s analysis addressed a gap in the literature by analyzing Caucasian centeredness and thereby filling in a fissure with a discussion of the forced emergence of black journalists at a major daily newspaper
Gwyneth Mellinger’s 2013 book Chasing Newsroom Diversity: From Jim Crow to Affirmative Action explored the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the evolution of the organization’s views on encouraging its members to racially integrate their newsrooms. Mellinger did not indicate that a discrimination lawsuit or EEOC complaint was the reason that editors integrated their newsrooms. Instead, she purported that newspapers maintained all white staffs until the late 1960s and early 1970s because leadership believed the press held a special place in American democracy. The freedom of the press provision in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protected the press and made it somewhat untouchable, even concerning the equal employment dictums of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Furthermore, the editors believed that the Kerner recommendations were toothless.
The sense of journalistic exceptionalism, which set newsrooms above other places of employment in editors’ minds, allowed them, individually and collectively through the ASNE, to exempt themselves from the democratic mandates that applied elsewhere (Mellinger, 2013, p. 45).
Subsequently, as late as 1972, black reporters represented less than one percent of the nation’s journalists employed at white newspapers. Editors said racism had nothing to do with the underrepresentation of black reporters. Qualified black journalists were in short supply (pp. 46 and 54). And when the white press hired a black reporter:
The quality of work produced by our minority staff members has been consistently inferior to the general body of work produced by their nonminority colleague. I regret to say that the usefulness of minority professionals has been confined largely to a very selective sense: Minority coverage (p. 56).
Mellinger’s important study left space that needs to be occupied, and this study fills much of the void.
The Times-Picayune
Northerners Francis Asbury Lumsden and George Wilkins Kendall released the first issue of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans on the cold, pitiful, rainy morning of Wednesday, January 25, 1837 (Dabney, 1943). The first issue signaled to readers that the newspaper supported slavery. “To those fanatical pirates that cruise under the black [italics original] flag –who oppose slavery, … we say look out for our Long Tom!” (Picayune, 1837, p. 2). The Picayune continuously published articles, commentaries, and literature against black people and their movements to coerce the federal government to enact civil rights laws and appeal to the courts to overturn discriminatory state and local laws. The Picayune published a story in 1890 that exemplified its continued anti-black sentiments. Local black leaders demonstrated to gain control of the racially segregated schools set aside for black children. The newspaper maintained that black people lacked the intellectual capacity to run a school system. “…it is greatly to be doubted [whether] colored teachers of experience and training are to be found here competent to take charge of the higher schools” (Times-Picayune, 1890, p. 4).
The Picayune derived its name from the “picayon,” which was the Spanish spelling of the word picayune, a coin valued at 6 ¼ cents. A single copy of the newspaper sold for one picayune. Throughout the years, the newspaper ridiculed black people and their experiences. For 118 years, at least until 1955, the newspaper peppered its pages with the noxious racial label “nigger,” characterized black people as simpleminded, and maintained support for segregation (Baptiste, 2023). In 1955, the paper hired a token black free-lance reporter, Marcus Neustadter. In 1962, Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr., purchased the Picayune as well as the New Orleans States-Item, the afternoon daily. In 1967, Newhouse hired Ashton Phelps, Sr., to work as president and publisher, a position he held until 1979. Phelps, Sr., was a lawyer for 30 years before accepting the leadership position at the Picayune.
Ridicule of black people and disparaging remarks against them were not limited to the newspaper’s content. Insults were also expressed by the paper’s leadership. An EEOC attorney, Walter A. Garnsey, indicated that Phelps referred patronizingly and insultingly to his black employees as “niggras” (Garnsey, personal communication, 2022). In 1973, Phelps talked to a judge who adjudicated a hearing in the case EEOC v. Times-Picayune. Phelps told Judge Lansing L. Mitchell, “We take care of our employees, including the niggras. You know that” (Garnsey, 2022). Referring to EEOC attorneys, Phelps continued, these are, “Yankee lawyers coming down here telling us what to do.”
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Blacks did not typically file a lawsuit against a daily newspaper alleging that it refused to hire African Americans. However, women filed sex discrimination litigation in the early 1970s against The Detroit News, The New York Times, and the Associated Press among others. The news organizations settled sex discrimination lawsuits that charged the companies with refusing to hire female journalists (Palmeira, 2012). In broadcasting in the mid-1960s, blacks accused outlets of racial discrimination and challenged owners who applied to the FCC for license renewals. The FCC decided which licensees would receive approval for their renewal applications. The commission allowed the public to challenge applications. In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1965, African Americans were among a group who filed a discrimination charge with the FCC against a media company. The complaint alleged that local radio station WJDX and television outlet WLBT racially discriminated in hiring and programming. On May 20, 1965, the FCC ordered the company to stop discriminating and to engage in discussions with local black leaders to resolve discrimination issues.
While the record provided limited information concerning Payne and why he risked his job to file a complaint with the EEOC, a quartet of events occurred within two months of June 10, 1968, when Payne made his accusation. James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis on April 4. As news of King’s assassination spread across the country, young black males mostly, enraged by the murder, violently protested in nearly 125 cities. They burned buildings, looted businesses, and fired guns, but spared schools, churches, and homes (Austin, 2006; Bennett, 1993; Vernon, 1964, 1968). As well, a year earlier in the summer of 1967, the first wave of urban riots engulfed some 150 cities around the country. To address the disturbances, on July 19, 1967, President Johnson empaneled the Kerner Commission. He charged it with finding the reasons the riots erupted and how to prevent them from igniting again. During the summers of 1967 and the spring of 1968, some big city dailies hired black reporters to cover the riots. As such, they racially integrated their newsrooms (Carroll, 2017). Conditions in New Orleans were different. The brunt of the disturbances bypassed New Orleans, and the Picayune did not need to hire black reporters to go into riot zones. While there were some fire bombings in New Orleans, only “minor damage” resulted (New Orleans, 1968, p. 1).
Another event that preceded Payne’s action was President Johnson who on April 11 signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The federal law prohibited racial discrimination in the sale of real property, rental of residences, and the financing of home purchases. While fair housing is different than employment discrimination, it was nevertheless a sweeping gesture that advanced the cause of civil rights. The last of the significant events that preceded Payne’s EEOC complaint was a two-day regional conference of the NAACP in New Orleans during the first week of April. Besides workshops including youth advising and fundraising, the organization put forth resolutions that protested unfair hiring practices as well as criticized the racial attitudes and practices of local news media. A highlight of the convention was the formation of a delegation that went to the Times-Picayune and the afternoon States-Item and staged a protest against what they said were discriminatory practices (Louisiana, 1968).
Equal employment opportunity commission
Segregationist ideology and practice continued to dominate systems and institutions in the United States throughout the 1960s. On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress. To push Congress to pass the legislation, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin were principals among organizers of the August 18, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Some 250,000 attendees at the march heard rights leaders including King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. After President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, adopted the cause and guided the civil rights bill through Congress. Johnson signed the civil rights bill into law on July 2, 1964. The federal legislation comprised 11 titles that intended to protect disadvantaged groups from discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, or sex (Back, 2020).
The emergence of full-time black journalists
Sixteen years before the Times-Picayune hired its first black full-time journalist in 1971, it employed a black free-lance reporter, Marcus Neustadter, whose first article appeared in the paper in 1955. Neustadter covered black high school and college athletics and black affairs. African-American copy editor Van Borders, who worked at the Picayune for 37 years from 1975 until 2012, said he was unimpressed. The newspaper hired only one, part-timer to cover 233,914 blacks, who represented 60% of the 1960 population of 392,594 New Orleanians (Population, 1981). Notwithstanding three years after Payne’s 1968 complaint, during the period that the EEOC conducted its investigation and during litigation in federal court, the Picayune hired Dwight Ott as a part-time journalist whom a few months later the paper elevated to full-time. Thereupon, Ott became the paper’s first black full-time reporter. His first story was published on September 10, 1971 (Ott, October 8, p. 61).2 That story was of general interest, but his first black-oriented story was a report/review of the Tulane University performance of poet Gylan Kain, who was a member of the Last Poets, a group that performed black nationalist-themed poems accompanied by music. Two months elapsed between Ott’s first black-oriented story and the second that was published on December 3 (Ott, p. 64). It concerned a one-year-old collaboration among black contractors who pooled their resources to be able to qualify for contracts to build major complexes instead of only small residential units. The third of Ott’s black-focused stories appeared on December 14 (Ott, p. 66) and concerned an Urban League conference on the prevalence of sickle cell anemia in the city.
The second full-time black reporter at the paper was Joyce M. Davis, whom the Picayune hired in November 1972. Her first story appeared on December 14. It was a general interest piece about an adult continuing education program in the city. More than a year later, on January 11, 1973, Davis’s exclusive black-oriented story ran. She wrote about the black sniper Mark Essex and told the story through the eyes and experiences of his girlfriend. Essex perched himself on the rooftop of the Howard Johnson Hotel in downtown New Orleans and with a high-powered rifle killed three policemen before being gunned down. Davis said white reporters at the Picayune during the period did not venture into the tough Desire housing project. Davis said she believed the Picayune integrated, not to hire African Americans to find black-oriented stories, but instead because of the Payne-initiated lawsuit (Davis, 2022).
James Borders, a black reporter at the city’s afternoon daily, the States-Item, from 1975 until 1976, was emphatic that the appeals court consent decree forced the Picayune to hire more African Americans:
In bringing in black people, they didn’t move until the consent decree had been settled. They didn’t do this voluntarily. They only did it when they were forced … I understand that they contested it all the way up to the Supreme Court … They then acquiesced and started bringing people on staff (J.B. Borders, 2020, personal correspondence).
Van Borders further said: “I came in because of this consent decree … The Picayune was running out of options after they loss the case” (V. Borders, 2020, personal correspondence). He surmised that the Picayune claimed it could not find qualified blacks during 150 years in business. “I mean, they were utterly ridiculous.” New Orleans was the home of three black universities, Southern University at New Orleans, Dillard University, and Xavier University.
U.S. District Court
On April 12, 1973, the EEOC issued a “Notice of Failure of Conciliation,” which was a statement informing the Times-Picayune that its refusal to cooperate and resolve the allegations warranted judicial intervention (EEOC, 2015). Five years elapsed between the time of Payne’s complaint on June 10, 1968, and May 15, 1973, when the EEOC filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The New Orleans office of the EEOC submitted the case to its headquarters. but the historical record did not indicate why years passed before the case advanced. Nevertheless, the District Court gave the case the name the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission vs. the Times-Picayune Publishing Company. The lawsuit said, “the Times-Picayune refuses to recruit and hire black persons on the same bases as whites; that it employed pre-employment selection standards which eliminated a greater proportion of blacks than whites; and that it maintained a system of racially segregated job classifications” (Times-Picayune, 1973, p. 14). District Court Judge Lansing L. Mitchell gave the Picayune approximately 30 days, until June 25 to answer the EEOC’s complaint. On July 16, the Picayune asked the court to dismiss the case.
Trial attorney Walter A. Garnsey represented the EEOC, the plaintiff in the case. He was based at the EEOC’s Denver Regional Litigation Center which handled complaints originating in 11 states, including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico.
New Orleans attorney Julian R. Murray of Kullman, Lang, Inman & Bee represented the Picayune. The trial opened in the Royal Street courthouse on the morning of Wednesday, August 8, 1973.
Murray asked the judge to dismiss the case against the Picayune contending that the EEOC did not follow appropriate legal procedures. In addition to the accusation of a technical breach, Murray claimed that the newspaper did not racially discriminate because it had always supported black causes. The “Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation has been fighting for civil rights long before Mr. Garnsey and I were practicing law and long before there was a Civil Rights Act” (EEOC, 1974, pp 8–9).
Actually, the opposite was true. The Picayune supported slavery and consistently opposed laws and court rulings that sought equal legal protection for black people (Picayune, 1837). For example, in the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racially separate public schools. The Picayune disagreed and supported racial segregation. New Orleans officials maintained segregated schools for six years after Brown until November 14, 1960, when U.S. District Court Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to integrate. The Picayune editorialized its disapproval of the court decision: “We don’t like school integration any better in 1960 than we did in 1954 when we urged a relentless legal fight against it, but it doesn’t do any good to adopt an ostrich attitude and stick our heads in the sand” (Crain, 1966; Times-Picayune, 1960, p. 12).
At the District Court hearing on August 8, 1973, while the attorneys stood near the bench facing the judge, Garnsey heard a hinge squeak as the railing gate opened. It was the Picayune publisher Ashton Phelps, Sr., approaching the bench. According to Garnsey, Phelps, in a highly unprecedented move, interrupted the proceedings and said to the judge: “May I be heard as a member of the board of the Picayune Publishing Corporation” (Garnsey, personal communication, 2022).
Apparently, Phelps and Judge Mitchell knew each other well, according to Garnsey. Phelps said the EEOC conducted an inadequate investigation and refused to give the defense a copy of its report. He added that the EEOC broadened its investigation beyond Payne’s accusation. “Wendall Payne, and he’s happy, he’s satisfied, he asked the EEOC to forget the whole thing…” (EEOC, 1974, p. 31). Phelps said the Picayune promoted Payne eight times since the EEOC began its formal investigation in 1969 (EEOC, 1974, p. 22).
Before ending the court session, Judge Mitchell conveyed his support for the Picayune. “I think that a great deal of this is much ado about nothing.” The judge said the newspaper would treat everyone fairly and equally. “You treat the black people as well as you treat the white people.” Thereafter, Mitchell said: “I’m going to tell the government, I’m not going to allow you to run roughshod, because you’re a government agency, over a private corporation, which is the backbone of this country, the private corporation, the private businesses.” He additionally told the two parties to sit down and work out a compromise before August 31 (EEOC, 1974, p. 44).
The District Court met again on October 10. The defendant said the EEOC did not properly plead all conditions related to the lawsuit. Mitchell’s order said, “We do not feel that this case has been handled in a prompt and resolute manner, and for that reason, we hold that for the purposes of Mr. Payne’s individual charge, suit may be maintained by him in his behalf. The Commission may not maintain an action on behalf of Payne” (EEOC, 1974, n.p.). The judge gave Wendall A. Payne 90 days to file a civil suit on behalf of himself. Garnsey strongly disagreed and took the action to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court’s decision, denying the Picayune’s request for a dismissal. On Oct. 10, 1974, the Appeals Court officially threw out the District Court’s action saying the EEOC’s original complaint was sufficient (EEOC, 1974). The Picayune appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in Feb. 1975, the high court refused to hear the case. Thereupon, the Picayune effectively loss the seven-year battle (Lang & Carey, 1975).
Consent decree
In January 1976, eight years after Wendall A. Payne filed his complaint with the EEOC, the Court of Appeals issued a consent decree that ordered the Picayune to take measures ensuring that it would not discriminate against black people in employment. The decree applied to all departments at the corporation, including the newsroom. On January 22, Phelps commented on the decree that obligated the Picayune for a minimum of two years. The Picayune must “make strenuous and conscientious efforts to find qualified Negroes or members of other minorities to fill available jobs” (Times-Picayune, 1976, p. 3). In a statement published in an article in the Picayune, Phelps said the newspaper did not admit to wrongdoing. The agreement,” Shall not constitute an adjudication or finding on the merits of the case and shall in no manner be construed as an admission … of any violation of said Title VII. The defendant’s position is that it has complied with and will continue to comply with all aspects of Title VII” (Times-Picayune, 1976, p. 2).
The Picayune Corporation distributed to its employees a statement of a new policy on employment practices. The statement said the company rebuked discrimination against anyone based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The policy covered recruiting, hiring, working conditions, promotions, use of company facilities, and all other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment (Consent Decree, 1976). The corporation would discipline or fire anyone who violated the policy. Management told its stakeholders: “We are actively seeking to employ more Negros and other minority group members. I urge you to refer minority group persons to us for employment and to encourage your friends and associates to do the same” (Consent Decree, 1976, p. 13).
The Picayune corporation agreed that for a minimum of two years, it would not refuse to hire, promote, or progressively transfer any black person or other protected individual; discriminate based on compensation or employment privileges; or segregate its workforce by race. Furthermore, the corporation agreed to work in partnership with organizations that existed to improve opportunities for black people. The decree identified the Urban League of New Orleans, the NAACP, and similar organizations; as well as the local black educational institutions: Dillard University, Xavier University of New Orleans, and Southern University at New Orleans. The decree, as well, required the Picayune to report in writing a summary of whether individual black applicants were hired, a decision was pending, or the applicant was rejected. If the Picayune hired an employment agency, it was required to send a letter to the company requesting that it include people of color among its applicant pool. The decree required the management to execute “strenuous conscientious effort” to hire at least one Negro out of every three applicants for positions as a technician for as long as the total number of African Americans was less than 10.5% of employees in that classification. The percentage increased to 17.8% in the craftsmen category (Consent Decree, 1976).
The EEOC reported comparative local employment data applicable to 1974 and 1975. In the professional, technical, and managerial job categories, in 1974, people of color employed in the city of New Orleans comprised 10,772 positions which represented 10.5% of 102,312 employees in the category. During the same year, a total of 284 professional employees worked at the newspaper, with 10 or 2.8% representing blacks or otherwise non-whites. (Consent Decree, 1976). To track the paper’s progress in employment practices, the decree required the Picayune to send the EEOC, every three months copies of correspondences it exchanged with black-interest organizations as well as notices of employment opportunities. The paper was to report the status of recruitment efforts, statistics of the numbers and percentages of new hires, and a list of the number and race of employees transferred, promoted, or discharged. The decree also required the paper to report by race the wage levels, number of individuals transferred or promoted, and those terminated. If the Picayune did not comply, the EEOC had the authority to ask the court to compel the publisher to satisfy the terms of the agreement that ended on January 24, 1978.3 The historical record did not indicate the Picayune’s level of compliance with the consent decree. Nevertheless, within 10 years after Payne’s 1968 complaint, the Picayune by 1978 had hired six black full-time journalists and one African-American copy editor.4
Conclusion
The 1964 Civil Rights Act contained a provision outlawing racial discrimination in employment practices. A year later, the federal law spawned the EEOC to act as an investigatory and enforcement agency. The Act surfaced circa five years before major newspapers began integrating. Newspapers did not immediately comply with the law because editors, such as members of the American Society of News Editors, contended that freedom of the press as articulated in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protected news organizations from such governmental interference. Subsequently, newspapers generally continued white-only newsrooms until the late 1960s. Despite ASNE’s argument, the First Amendment applied to the news media because the U.S. Constitution prohibited the government from interfering in legal press activity and not illegal behavior. The Act outlawed racial discrimination in employment, and white employers who maintained Caucasian centeredness were in violation.This study argued that a 1968 racial discrimination complaint initiated by Times-Picayune blue-collar worker Wendall A. Payne led to a federal court in 1976 issuing a consent decree that required the newspaper to hire more black employees. Neither the complaint or the agreement mentioned a specific category of jobs. Instead, it applied to all of the company’s departments including the newsroom. Other dailies in midsize to large cities integrated their journalism staff without such court intervention. At the Picayune, Payne was fed up with experiencing racial discrimination. He acted after a chorus of public events occurred within two months of him filing the official complaint with the EEOC: The murder of the Rev. King, nationwide riots, presidential signing of the 1968 Civil Rights bill, and an NAACP conference in New Orleans that included a protest at the Picayune headquarters. An NAACP delegation brought to the attention of the Picayune’s management complaints black New Orleanians had concerning the newspaper. They pointed out racially biased content, inadequate coverage of the black community, and a lack of African-American reporters.It was not surprising that the Times-Picayune waited 118 years, from its founding in 1837 until 1955, the year it hired Marcus Neustadter, a token black man who worked as a part-time reporter. The paper was located in the Deep South, a region that supported the enslavement of Africans, started a civil war to maintain slavery, enacted a bevy of laws that denied black people equal legal protection, and marginalized African Americans who sought gainful involvement in the country’s institutions and systems. The Picayune was a coconspirator, and it did not acquiesce. The newspaper pushed back against Payne’s complaint and the EEOC’s lawsuit for eight years until 1976 when a federal appeals court issued a consent decree. It took the courts to force the Times-Picayune to move toward racial inclusiveness. Even after accepting the consent decree, Picayune publisher Phelps, Sr., refused to concede saying the paper admitted no wrongdoing (Times-Picayune, 1976).
Despite Phelps’s pronouncement, the Times-Picayune had a history of opposition to African Americans and their pursuit of liberation. In 1960, the local Louisiana Weekly newspaper published a letter to the editor from Daniel Vincent. He indicated that the Picayune stood against everything and everyone who favored black people. As a result, black New Orleanians should not support the Times-Picayune or the States-Item, Vincent wrote. He called upon the readers to follow the examples of black people around the country and demonstrate that “…we are not going to accept ‘token integration’ or any other form of second-class citizenship” (Louisiana Weekly, 1960, p. 10).
As well, the Weekly, a black newspaper founded in 1925, frequently published opinion pieces, blurbs, and commentary in articles testifying to the Picayune’s unjust coverage and treatment of black people. On March 17, 1962, the Weekly published an unsigned column, “Here ‘N There,” within which the writer reported being disturbed that the Picayune inserted in the back of its paper, near the want-ads section, pictures of black girls who were ceremonial honorees at Carnival balls. Conversely, the Picayune published comparable pictures of white girls near the front of the paper. The writer said he or she also received complaints that the newspaper disrespected black clergy in its news columns. The Picayune referred to white ministers as “The Reverend,” but dropped the “The” when mentioning a member of the black clergy. “This is just about the rankest type of discrimination as one can be subjected to as a human being and as a man of God” (Louisiana Weekly, 1962, p. 14).
More than 30 years later, in 1993, the Picayune published an unprecedented months-long series of articles, commentaries, and illustrations titled, “Together Apart: The Myth of Race.” In a June 17 article in the series, management admitted that the newspaper rarely published progressive articles concerning black people. Instead, reporters frequently wrote stories that linked blacks to criminal activity. Change was ushered in and the bias subsided when the paper hired full-time black reporters beginning in 1971. In the June 17 story, Norman Francis, the president of Xavier University and a member of the Picayune’s advisory board, said the paper was changing, but “there are times I read it and realize again that, yes, it still is a white paper” (Adams, 1993, n.p.).
The emergence of black full-time journalists and their Afro-centered stories extended to African Americans a traditional function of the news media. The press surveils public affairs and interprets issues that affect the community. With racial inclusiveness in the newsroom, the African-American community was included. The arrival of African-American reporters also provided opportunities for black people to experience racial pride. Michael Dawson, in Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (1994), posited that black people experienced linked fate when they perceived that an African American overcame racial barriers and entered the white-professional world. In other words, African Americans interpreted the piercing of white-exclusive institutions as though racism was subsiding and their children and grandchildren could rise to and enter the upper echelons of the social, political, and economic realms. The Picayune’s second black reporter, Joyce M. Davis, revealed instances of linked fate. Davis regularly received celebratory phone calls and letters from African Americans, such as an older black woman who said she was so proud of Davis that she cut out Davis’s articles and affixed them to her refrigerator (Davis, 2022).
At any rate, substantive race-related change in the United States has not happened unaffected by demonstrations, protests, voting, legal action, and other types of activism. In other words, change requires a catalyst. Civil rights organizations, purveyors of nationalism, proponents of black power, separatists’ sympathizers, religious groups, and community outrage over the years have drawn attention to African Americans’ demands for equality. Nevertheless, sometimes bold individuals draw attention to the need for change. Rosa Parks and Mamie Till-Mobley come to mind. Wendall A. Payne did not become a newsmaker. The shadowy figure whom the historical record barely mentioned, stood up, filed a racial discrimination complaint and, as a result, the Times-Picayune diverged from its Caucasian-centered trajectory and moved toward racial inclusiveness.
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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.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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