Paul Delaney and Affirmative Action: “We Should Have Been Farther Along”
A veteran black journalist on covering America, from the civil rights movement to today
Paul Delaney was the only black student in his graduating class at Ohio State University’s journalism school in 1958. He applied to 50 daily newspapers and received 50 rejection letters. He was finally hired by black-owned Atlanta Daily World in 1959 and was in the city when the modern Civil Rights movement was born. But the World was against the protests, running anti-movement editorials and giving mere coverage to its activity.
As an early-career black journalist, I thought it was necessary to reach out to a black veteran journalist, to ask about change and hardship. In the Journalism press and community that exists today — a cross-generational viewpoint of objectivity, racial news equity, and newsrooms parity.
In a history segment with HistoryMakers, he said, “the World would editorialize and skew the coverage.” Delaney said in a phone interview that “the editor was against the movement. A lot of events that happened were left out of the paper.” News reporting was counterproductive in an urgent narrative of the era; that includes publications like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Delaney, and C.A. Scott, the editor, would argue almost daily about the news, with Scott diluting Delaney’s stories — satisfied with the status quo. “When Atlanta students held first protest demonstrations in March 1960 — after weeks of battling old establishments that did not want demonstrations,” Delaney said.
His first story noted that over 3000 students marched in downtown Atlanta, protesting their resistance with a sit-in at department stores. “Their list of demands included hiring black clerks at the stores & serving blacks at lunch counters,” he said. Scott refused to print the demands of students protesting Jim Crow laws, saying — according to Delaney — that “our readers may think the World supported the demands.” Scott eventually fired him.
Delaney was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama. He wanted to be a writer, but he didn’t want to spend his years pursuing degrees in English and Literature. So, he majored in Journalism at Ohio State, where Delaney was sports editor of The Lantern, the school paper, in his senior year. The paper’s staff was integrated — besides Delaney, the editor was Catholic, the managing Editor was Jewish, and women ran other departments. The editor questioned the school’s heavy football culture and once ran into the famed football coach Woody Hayes, who declared, “The team brought in more money and fame to the school than the paper.”
“The traditional practice in many, if not most, newsrooms at the Times was to hire one black reporter, and when he left, replace him with another.”
Delaney participated in efforts to integrate newsrooms across the nation, including The New York Times where he worked in the 1960s. Delaney’s editors at the Times would not participate in an affirmative action plan. They refused to follow orders of one-for-one hiring dictated by Executive Editor Mark Frankel — each White hire had to be followed by a minority hire. The Editors ceased all hiring until Frankel, “he gave up and killed the policy: ‘Okay, hire whom you want,’ Delaney mentions.
“The traditional practice in many, if not most, newsrooms at the time was to hire one black reporter, and when he left, replace him with another,” Delaney told me. “They later started integrating with other minority groups. Hiring Asians and Hispanics over African-Americans to satisfy their affirmative action.”
Delaney’s grandparents were founders of Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery. The sanctuary was spacious, with a bold Pastor to host the Civil Rights rallies. Most ministers in the city didn’t unite the movement out of fear. When King moved SCLC to Atlanta, his office was three doors from the Daily World. Delaney worked at the paper for two years, then served as probation officer with Atlanta municipal court for a couple of years before becoming the first Black reporter at the Dayton Daily News.
Then on to the Washington Star in 1968. He was there on the night of King’s death, and he covered the riots that followed. Mayor Walter Washington rejected the suggestion by some white folks to order police to shoot looters. “They told him that he should order the police to shoot the rioters. He refused, he said, ‘I’ll never do that,’ he refused to give that kind of order,” Delaney recalled.
Delaney left the Evening Star for The New York Times. Working first in Washington and then Chicago in 1974. Looking for housing, he contacted a journalist friend, a vice president at the University of Chicago. The University-owned property in the Hyde Park area had recently bought a nearby mansion — to prevent Elijah Mohammed from purchasing the fancy property, which was located around the corner from Muslim headquarters.
Delaney’s conflict with the Nation of Islam began over news coverage. One headline read, “Chicago Muslim gets Qaddafi Loan.” “They were assumed to have lots of money but they didn’t,” he says. On page 8, the story reported a $5 million loan from Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. “They thought I was anti-Muslim, but I was just a reporter,” he says. It was news, but they started campaigning against him with threats each week.
“A few months after we moved in, we got an invitation from Mohammed Ali, to a big lawn party at the Muslim compound,” he says. Delaney suspected it was a kind of lure: some members complained bitterly about his coverage of the group. But the party was genuine. He and his wife sat at a table next to Mohammed Ali.
The invite solidified a peace over him, that was the end of it for some reason. “All kinds of people, drinking and smoking, which the Muslims were against. That was the end of threats that had lasted about two years,” he says.
As an activist, Delaney advocated for civil and humanitarian rights in journalistic endeavors. In 1976, he became a founder of The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), established with the “aim of prodding [their] profession to thoroughly integrate its newsrooms as soon as possible.” Later the Asian American, Native American, and Hispanic journalists associations, among others, were founded.
When the civil rights movement started, white media had to find black reporters to help them with news events.
“The civil rights movement in Washington and media integration combined. The local leaders would organize demonstrations and would call a press conference. Reporters who showed up were all white. The leader told them they’re not gonna allow any media that didn’t include blacks,” he says.
The current moment is equivalent to the 1960s, a new movement has arisen that is more intense and taxing on demands, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) — victims of police brutality. The names are repeated nationwide — Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and others. People are still demanding justice. Following tragedies of disproportionate scale, Black lives are headlined and published by predominantly white publications, newsrooms describe Black people’s socio-economic suffering as “civil unrest.”
“I would never dream my chosen profession would be confronting the same racial issues in the 21st century as it did in [the] mid-20th century, and earlier periods.”
“The future looks as bad as the past, if not worse,” wrote Delaney, in a 2017 article in The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). “I would never dream my chosen profession would be confronting the same racial issues in the 21st century as it did in [the] mid-20th century, and earlier periods.” “Newsroom diversity has been as spotty as race relations in America.” “Today demonstrations in all 50 states. More white, young, and old participated in the Black Lives Matter movement,” he states.
“Everyone genuinely seems to care. Collectively, not much changes.”
I ask what his expectations are on inclusivity, Delaney answers, “There is so much to apologize for, to compensate for, there’s more action than just mere apologies.” He continues, “I’m more impressed by action and activity, I think they’re lacking, they have not lived up to the promise of integration.”
“Everyone genuinely seems to care. Collectively, not much changes” is the title of Delaney’s CJR article. I ask, ‘How would you rename your article in Columbia journal based on what’s happening today?’ He says he would not change it, “Frankly, because I’m very disappointed in how things have gone. I’m disappointed in the lack of progress. The same problems, even though there have been some major changes. Given our recent history, we should have been farther along than we are.”
The Kerner Commission and The American Society of News Editors (ASNE), formerly known as the American Society of Newspaper Editors, records racial data from across the country. According to Delaney, ASNE found that a “great majority of newsrooms in the country were all-white with little inclination to change…blacks represented fewer than five percent of newsroom staffers.” Newsroom parity became a goal for ASNE leaders. Since 1978, their goal has been to increase the percentage of nonwhites. Delaney wrote the article three years ago. Decades have passed, and still deliberate pace in progress; ASNE extended its goals timeline from 1998 to 2025.
There are not enough Black journalists, and we need Black journalists. Newsrooms only sensationalize riots and black grief instead of the conditions of racial inequality that produce them, until now. Questions need to be pursued more forcefully — on how race coverage can have adequate and transparent coverage in black communities? How to hire staff members who are not biased, and how to fully diversify organizations.
On Twitter, Bree Newsome, an American filmmaker, and activist. (The Woman Who Took Down a Confederate Flag on What Came Next) said, “The lack of racial diversity itself reflects a lack of diversity in thought. The assumption that white people are uniquely capable of being objective and/or neutral without input from nonwhite people is itself a racist concept.”
Substantial progress is in the act of dismantling systemic racism is a continued and committed process. Growth is part of the foundation of change; to repair our community with compassion, trust, and accountability for the next generation to follow — especially police officials. Today, we can hope for parity in the fields of journalism, media organizations, and publications. We need independence and agency to communicate and feel empowered to speak and act in journalistic relationships. All races and media outlets must continue the momentum, reporting on racism and inequity in all iterations.
Presently, Delaney is living in Washington, DC., writing a memoir. He says his colleagues and friends are begging him to write faster.
