Somehow, yesterday seemed to be the perfect day for this talk at Wayne Community College's Moffatt Auditorium in Goldsboro, NC. Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gene Roberts has written a Pulitzer Prize winning book on the role the press played in the movement and he had a first-hand experience as he covered it for the New York Times for the duration. The book is titled, "The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation."
Mr. Roberts is a native of Goldsboro, graduationg from Goldsboro High School in 1950 and later the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His first journalism job was with the Goldsboro News-Argus.
Today, he lives in New York City, where he is semi-retired, but still teaches a history course on this era after an airplane commute to the University of Maryland.
INTRODUCTION BY FIRST BOSS, EUGENE PRICE
Former Goldsboro News-Argus and first boss Eugene Price introduced Mr. Roberts whose father had approached Price after Roberts had graduated from UNC about a job. There wasn't one at the time, but Price said he'd keep him in mind. Mr. Price is a stickler on "keeping it short," and six weeks later, an opening became available writing a column about Wayne County. Price sent him a letter advising of the opening and Roberts returned the same letter with the words, "I'll take it." Mr. Price knew right then that he had found his man.
In the closing of his introduction, Eugene Price said that Gene Roberts was "the greatest journalist ever produced by this county, this state, or this country in the past century." I'd have to say Mr. Price is a big fan.
By the way, this talk was originally scheduled for around MLK's birthday in January, but inclement weather kept Roberts plane from leaving NY, so it was rescheduled.
More Tomorrow. --Da Coot
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