INT: Did you read the black newspapers as a boy?
FB: Yes. The Pittsburgh Courier was sold in our -- in our city. We were 26 miles from Pittsburgh and one of the ministers there was the agent for the Courier. And practically every African American young man sold the Courier along with his daily newspapers. The Courier came out once a week and we tried to sell it on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, because it always carried church news. And with the churches meeting on Sunday, it meant a lot to the people in that community.

INT: Why did the Courier take over the Defender?
FB: Well, the -- ah, the Courier had more people affiliated with the Courier in your area. For instance, The Chicago Defender only sent papers into Pittsburgh to a few people and then, in turn, never got them to Washington, Uniontown, and so forth. So we didn't know too much about The Chicago Defender, and only those people who had relatives in Virginia knew much about The Norfolk Journal and Guide. We knew nothing about The Amsterdam News, Kansas City Call, and the other black newspapers. In fact, the mini-- the people in our home town only pushed The Pittsburgh Courier because we had people from Washington who worked for the Courier, we also knew the Courier people personally. So they got the overlay. And, of course, when Mr. Van finally got going, the Courier carried more national and local news than the other papers. So there was no chance for the other papers to -- to overshadow them in the western Pennsylvania.

INT: Why did people read the black press?
FB: The reason why people read the black press, ah, intensely was because the white newspapers did not carry positive news about blacks. All of them carried the pathological side of negro life, which was crime-crime- crime, and, ah, very seldom did you see anything positive unless the person was a national figure. A national figure, they would carry the New York -- the Eastern papers and you would get nothing in the South unless the person was from that particular city. Also, the columnists, which the -- which the black newspapers carried, particularly the Courier, you would not find in the white press. For instance, a column by Benjamin Maze(?) you wouldn't find in The New York Times.

INT: Why did the Courier take over from the Defender as the national paper?
FB: The Courier took over from the Defender and other competitors because they had more diversification of the news, number one. Number two, they had better contacts throughout the nation. Mr. Van and his staff had friends all across the country. Then when we got columnists like George Schuyler, he was well read by every black person because he was acerbic and he was very knowledgeable and what he wrote appealed to black people's interests. And we made sure that the columnists that we hired would have some following. Our columnists had better following than the Defender. See, a Benjamin Maze and a Bibbs and probably a Schuyler would draw more reader than what the Cour-- what the Defender had.

INT: Vann out-Defendered the Defender?
FB: Yes, Vann not only took what the -- what the Defender did, not only did he do it better, but he added to it. We were the first black newspaper to have white columnists. And, for instance, another item. Take the matter of lynching. All of the other papers were guessing at who did the lynching. The Courier hired white reporters and editors to go to the lynching parties. That's where we found Walter White, who later headed the NAACP. We found him Down South, and he put us in touch with a lot of reporters that covered lynchings for us. While the Defender and the Afro-American would report the lynching, we came pretty close to telling who did it because our reporter was there.

INT: Was Walter White one of these reporters?
FB: Walter White was one of the African American negroes who could pass for white. He was light complexioned, blonde-haired, and a very good reporter. And the -- he, ah, did work for us later on. And then, of course, he later became executive director of the NAACP.

INT: He would to go lynchings?
FB: Yes, Walter White would go to the lynchings, but he wasn't the only one. We had several white reporters. Ah, Stefan Kennedy was one who did excellent work for us. They attended the lynchings and reported back to us and we found that that was very good in the antebellum South.

INT: What is meant by the Courier always having to have a campaign?
FB: Ah, the minority press is of little value to the minority people unless it has a campaign. For instance, in your home town, how's the police department constituted? Does it have minority representation? In the labor force are they hirin' minorities? In sports are they hirin' minorities? And, of course, we campaigned for years to get desegregated armed service personnel. We did the same thing in professional sports. In the entertainment world we felt we should have more than just, ah, singers and dancers.

INT: Why a campaign?
FB: To -- to have the -- to have the reader support. They looked every time. They always looked to the Courier for that. No one else read -- read the newspapers for full reports on lynching, but the Courier. And the same was true when we started "Entertainment World". The rest of the newspapers never heard of Jimmy Lunsford, Count Basie, and others. They knew Moms Mabley. They knew Bojangles Robinson, but they didn't know Jimmy Lunsford. They didn't know Mills Blue Rhythm Boys. They didn't know, ah, the, ahm, Lunsford Band of Fisk University. When it got down to politics, only The Chicago Defender and the Courier knew about Roscoe Conklin Simmons, but there were others. We -- we were, ah, the earliest professors of Adam Powell.

INT: What was the Double V Campaign?
FB: The Double V Campaign came from the tent(?) of the young man by the name of Thompson out in Kansas. And he advocated at that time when we had -- were sending young men to the service to give -- to put their lives on the line for democracy, he felt not only should we be fighting the foe abroad, but we ought to be fighting desegre--segregation and discrimination here at home. And he -- and, ah, he suggests in place of holding up just one hand with the two fingers a V for victory sign, we hold up two. And we have a victory at home and victory abroad. And ah, that caught on and the Courier publicized that, promoted it all across the country. We even brought, ah, Thompson from Kansas to the office. We put him on the road. He did speaking engagements and so forth and so on and the campaign caught on.

INT: What was the best thing about the Double V Campaign?
FB: The best thing about the Double V Campaign is they got the -- the American negro excited enough to cause it to spread into other fields, such as employment, housing, and, ah, also in the way of public conduct. In other words, it helped us in our fight to give people of color first class citizenship, which they did not have. And this campaign in itself was noteworthy in the fact that it involved so many of our people and then later on it even drew the attention of some liberal white people, who, in turn, followed through in employment and in some areas of housing, and also in education. There were some school systems that began to desegregate their schools.

INT: Was this sort of the forerunner to the Civil Rights Campaign?
FB: It is the fore-- it was the fore-- the Double V Campaign was the forerunner to the Civil Rights Movement. It only stands -- stands up under that kind of scrutiny and the fact that it did have that effect shows how deep-rooted it was. And it takes time. See, one of the smallest and most weakest of the mollusks is the oyster and if you irritate the oyster long enough, it'll finally give a pearl. So if you irritate this problem long enough, it finally begins to pay fruit and it did in the Civil Rights Movement. And probably we need some of that even today.

INT: What was the response of the government to the Double V Campaign?
FB: The response to the Double V program by the government and other, ah, high officials in America -- that goes for industry and education -- was bitterness, anger, and in some areas name-calling. They thought it was absolutely wrong. In fact, ah, those who were advocating the Double V program were actually called traitors not only verbally, but in some of the newspapers, particularly the newspapers in the South. Columns like Westbrook Pegler stayed on us day after day. He said it was, ah, -- traitors of the highest type to advocate this kind of a program when we were at war with the Nazis. And our reply, all of our columnists and the editors of most of the newspapers, said that's which it's all about. It's those people in America who are following the same pattern as Hitler that we want to get rid of. And we pointed out heavily that our troops were dying for the democracy that Westbrook Pegler and they wanted, but they did not want to give the black man his pay.

INT: What was J. Edgar Hoover's reaction to the Double V Campaign?
FB: Well, J. Edgar Hoover, in reaction to the Double V Campaign, ah, followed Westbrook Pegler's line that it was, ah, an act of a traitor to ask for this kind of a program when the country was at war. He looked upon the second-class citizenship of black people in America as a social problem not to be decided durin' the war years. And he did all that he could to discredit it and he also discredited the leaders. And, of course, as you know, if you know Edgar Hoover well, you know that he always resorted to some sexual exploitation of people when he was after them, regardless of who they were. He went after Presidents. He went after everybody. Now Edgar Hoover decided that the black press was dangerous to America's well-being in the war and he did all within his power to accuse of sedition, and he almost got away with it had it not been for the fact that his Attorney General, Francis Biddle, ah, argued against it because freedom of speech is one of America's -- one of America's prized and cherished tenets. So Edgar Hoover picked on every black leader in this country who espoused the cause and did all he could to try to get something on them that would land them in court, but he wasn't able to do that. But, ah, he was-- he wasn't alone. He had friends in Congress. He had friends in business and labor and, in fact, he had many white people in America who thought that at the time -- it was ill-timed. Even some of the liberal whites who'd been on our side for years said that they agreed with us that second-class citizenship wasn't good, but this wasn't the time to fight it.

INT: Talk about the important of Biddle.
FB: Well, the importance of Biddle in the, ah -- in the fight against the Double V and also the newspapers asking for the elimination of second-class citizenship, Francis Biddle said that the American people had a right to plead their cause at any time. Also the minority group that was before us at this moment was America's least privileged minorities and if this is the way they felt, they should be accommodated and not castigated. And he opposed Edgar Hoover. He opposed Franklin Roosevelt, the President, who was leaning heavily on Hoover's side. And he said it would not be good for America, America's own conscience, and it would certainly not look good to the rest of the world, keeping in mind we were facing England, France, and all of the countries of color -- India, China, and the underdeveloped countries as we knew them.

INT: So Hoover had Roosevelt's ear?
FB: Hoover had the President's ear. He had the ear of almost every President, and Roosevelt was no exception. Also, Roosevelt was gullible. He was a fine President, but he was gullible. He got emotional on some things and on the race problem he was definitely emotional. He wasn't like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Harry Truman. Ah, he was easily swayed when it came to this problem of equality for all men. Now he was inclined to be -- in my opinion, he was inclined to be an elitist. He thought the middle and upper class blacks needed some help. Ah, he thought that the less fortunate could rely on welfare and make it.
FB: Hoover's attempt to have the negro publishers accused of sedition and all that fell flat for the simple reason you couldn't do that. Freedom of the press, freedom to speak out is an American tenet and Hoover thought that only applied to White America. And he convinced Roosevelt that to have the minority people upset would hinder the war effort. Particularly would it effect the fighting troops, the troops that were already overseas. And he didn't want that. He didn't understand that the Constitution of the United States was for everybody.

INT: Didn't Hoover actually get hearings started?
FB: The FBI director can have a hearing of every hour of every day if he so desires. There's no problem. There was always somebody -- there was always somebody around to hear this. He had hearings every week.

INT: Tell me the story of you being called back for hearings.
FB: I just got a notice one day that -- that I was wanted in Washington to report on (Coughs) the condition of the troops as regards this Double V program that Hoover said was an act of sedition. And I flew back and I only -- I only stayed two days because when I found out it was superfluous and silly, I didn't want to waste my time. I reported on the troops and that was all. I had nothing to do with the policy of the newspapers. Right there in the - in the heart of whole problem in Washington, D.C., just a few miles from them was Carl Murphy of the, ah, ah, Baltimore Afro-American and then not too far away was John Sengstacke of The Chicago Defender, and my own boss, P.L. Prattis, was already in Washington. And they could have interviewed them on the policy of the newspapers. I had nothing to do with policy, but I could report on those troops that I had covered. So I flew back and did my job. In fact, the longer I stayed, the more angry I became at Hoover and I thought I'd better get out of there before I said something out of turn, because I have a very short fuse for neanderthal psychoceramics, crackpots.

INT: Was the interview for the purpose of finding out how the Double V Campaign was affecting the troops?
FB: Hoover wanted to -- he was so sure that it affected the troops to the point where they would -- would, ah, do -- perform traitorous acts against the Army and the Navy and the US, and they were bitter about it, but they didn't do that. He didn't know them well. In fact, Hoover knew very little about the Afro-American.
FB: As regards Roosevelt, Biddle, and Hoover and the Double V Campaign, yes, I believe, in my opinion, had not Francis Biddle been the Attorney General, had he not been there, I think Roosevelt would have succumbed to Hoover's blandishments. He did not have a guts to tell him no.

INT: What do you mean?
FB: He didn't have the guts, just tell Hoover no, the word "no". All he had to do to J. Edgar Hoover is say, "What part of 'no' don't you understand? I'm not going to do that." Roosevelt knew that to charge any newspaper in America with sedition, unless they came out and said, "Stop the war effort, we're not going to participate," and all that, you have to have grounds for sedition. He knew that. He was no dummy.

INT: Well, do you think that ...
FB: And I don't think he had the guts for because we didn't get a President with guts until Harry Truman got in there.

INT: Without Biddle there, what would have happened?
FB: Without Biddle being there, Roosevelt would have probably succumbed to Hoover's request to ban the black press and always -- also charge them with sedition. And the President of the United States would have gained more favor in this country if he had charged the black press with sedition. Keep in mind there were more people in this country against the black press than were for the black press. Many people thought, including some African Americans, thought the time was not right for us to be asking for elimination of second-class citizenship when the country was at war.

INT: Tell me the story of General (Unintell.) and what he stood up for.
FB: When General Almond reported to Fort Watchuka to take command of the 93rd Infantry Division, his first meeting with the 17 black officers who had been assigned to that division, he greeted in the lowest terms that a general could ever ... could ever deliver to his troops. He said, "You niggers have no business being officers in the United States Army. You don't have the brains for it. And you don't have the experience for it." And some of those men came out of the 24th Infantry, who had been in the service longer than he had been. He said, "You have been assigned to service work. You're well qualified for that. And I am an officer of the United States Army and I have been assigned here and I will put up with you and I will tolerate you because the Army says so, but I don't believe you'll ever become good soldiers. It's just not in you. You have," quote, "too much 'monkey blood' in you."
FB: Well, the -- when the meeting broke up, the men were naturally -- when Almond -- when Almond made these remarks at Fort Watchuka in his first address to the black officers of the 93rd Infantry Division, ah, it did cause some bad feelings to exist between troops and the commanding officer. However, there was nothing the troops could do about it. It took me three days to get the dispatch up to Tucson and get it back to the Courier. Once we got it in print, Pradis went to Washington to the War Department and he got the Defender and The Baltimore American and all that to join him in persuading (Clears Throat) -- the War Department admitted they would have to move him, but they couldn't do it right then. They had no other officer to send to Watchuka, because no officer in his right mind would want to walk in behind that, particularly when the War Department itself was not in favor of combat troops. True, they had reactivated the 93rd.

INT: You were one of the first ...
FB: Ah, after the war broke out, the Courier thought that black reporters should cover the black troops in action and they went about the business of trying to get accredited correspondence. And that was hard to do because most of the correspondence -- most of the reporters came off of papers that had been fighting the War Department to desegregate their, ahm, troops, but, ahm, we didn't have that many reporters who had finished college, had the credentials, so to speak, to attract the War Department. The War Department refused to look upon any black reporter who don't have a college education. As it so happened, Pradis was able to get two of us accredited, in case one of us got ill or something happens and one didn't come through. So Edgar Rousseau from The Amsterdam News -- well, he first worked for The Amsterdam News and later he worked for us for a short while. Edgar Rousseau, from New York, and myself were their accredited correspondents. An accredited correspondents could go anywhere that he desired. He had to have permission to come in, but he could go anywhere. He wasn't assigned to groups -- to troops to stay there.

INT: So that was a big deal.
FB: Yes, it was major -- a major, ah, accomplishment for the black press to have an accredited war correspondent, particularly with troops that were being trained for combat.

INT: When Almond gave his speech, did he know that there was an accredited correspondent?
FB: That, I don't know. I don't know whether -- I don't know whether Almond knew that a reporter was there or not. I know he did afterwards because Colonel Hardy, who was commander of the post, told him that Mr. Bolden had reported to him what he said. And Colonel Hardy told him that it was a foolish statement to make because not only did he have the 93rd Infantry Division there to insult, but he had the first black military hospital corps there.

INT: Was the turning of Lincoln's picture to the wall a major event?
FB: Robert L. Vann's ... action in 1932 affected not only all the African Americans in America, but whites, as well, when he urged the black voters in America to turn Lincoln's picture to the wall. Up to that time, 90 percent of the black people in America were Republican. You had very few Democrats. In many big cities, like Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, had very, very few Democrats. When Robert L. Vann, in '32, said, "The Republicans have not done anything for us in all these years since Lincoln, it's time to change. So turn Lincoln's picture to the wall." In Pennsylvania alone, 79,000 voters changed and, of course, you know the rest of the story around the nation. Vann became a political -- a national political power then. His ability to turn the African American voter registration to the Democratic ranks. And he moved on and moved up. He became an Assistant Attorney General from that. But Bob Vann was, ahm, a visionary. He could see around the corners and many things and this was one of his major accomplishments, getting blacks to leave Abraham Lincoln, the man who signed the declara-- I mean the Emancipation Proclamation. I know around here in Pittsburgh, to change this Republican black voter registration was a master stroke. And once they went Democrat, they never turned back and, of course, in later years when Vann went back to the Republican Party, the blacks did not follow him.

INT: What was Van like personally ?
FB: Vann was a politician, statesmen, publisher, and a brilliant lawyer, and, ahm, he carried out the adage that I always use. "One man with faith and courage is a majority." He was always at least ten stat-- ten steps ahead of his time. A severe taskmaster. There was only one -- two ways to do things for him, the rin-- wrong way and the right way, and he wanted the right way. And the right way was always Vann's way -- hard -- he was a hard man to reason with and once he set his mind on a goal, he never gave up.

INT: Compare "Turn Lincoln's picture to the wall" to "I Have a Dream".
FB: The -- ah, the turning of the picture to the wall that Bob Vann advocated back in '32 for -- for the black voter to leave the Republican Party, it affected the whole country in that it gave him an emotional appeal. Also it gave him something to do and something to work on. The "I Have a Dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King had the same emotional value. When I covered that march in Washington in 1963, I was one of the ones who had charge of the press. I had the foreign press under my jurisdiction and supervision and that -- and that "I Have a Dream" speech gave us the boost in civil rights.

INT: Who was Dorie Miller and what the Courier did (Inaudible)?
FB: In World War II at Pearl Harbor a black Navy messman who had never fired a gun before in his life manned a machine gun on a sinking destroyer and downed four enemy planes. All the press in America knew was that a black messman had done that. The Courier did its best, so did the Defender, so did The Baltimore Afro-American, to find out his name. The Naval Department and the War Department just knew it was a black messman. They did not know his name. We sent P.L. Pradis to Washington, D.C. to stay on it. After four months of investigate and belaboring the War Department, Pradis came up with the name of the messman, who was Dorie Miller, whose home was in Texas. The Courier took the story and went to glory circulation-wise with it. The $10,000 was well invested. The only tragedy was it let us know that the War Department was not keeping any records of black troops except numbers.

INT: So he became a real hero.
FB: He became a seminal force in World War II. In fact, I've always -- I've always said, in my opinion, he was responsible for us getting into combat real big. The 93rd Infantry Division, the 92nd Infantry Division, and, above all, the so called famed Tuskegee Flyers. I don't -- I do not believe we would have had the Flyers without Dorie Miller's heroism. My only regret was he never got a Congressional Medal of Honor.

INT: What happened to Dorie Miller?
FB: Dorie Miller got killed in -- in action on one of the -- one of our naval ships and he died at sea.

INT: Talk about the role of the black press in getting baseball (Inaudible).
FB: The black press was very instrumental in getting black baseball players into the Major Leagues, notably, The Baltimore American, the Courier, and the Defender, but the Courier spent more money doing it. They also were more active in it. Chester Washington, our sports editor at the time, was interested in it, and so was Wendell Smith. Mr. Vann started it. He wanted major sports desegregated. We were able to start with Chester Washington, then we ended with Wendell Smith, who last summer was taken into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It wasn't easy because the Major League owners did not want it. We had good black baseball players right her in Pittsburgh. We had the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfers(?), two of the outstanding teams. Josh Gibson, Satchel Page, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, and others. Now the interesting thing was that Branch Rickey was impressed with the All-Star East-West Classic that black baseball leagues had every summer in Chicago. When he saw those 50,000 figures in attendance, he couldn't get over that, because Brooklyn -- the Brooklyn Dodgers were going broke. And he hit on the idea of getting a black player into the Major Leagues.

INT: So Wendell Smith actually lived with Jackie Robinson?
FB: He did. He lived with Jackie Robinson. Wendell Smith, who later became sports editor of the Courier, he traveled with Jackie, lived with him a whole year. We took care of him the whole year. He reported on Jackie every day. He was his traveling companion, because it wasn't easy. Jackie was, ah -- was a target of insults that the average man wouldn't stand. That's why Rickey took him into the leagues, because -- not because he was a better baseball player, but he could stood up under that punishment. Having been that -- at Southern California -- I mean at the University of California at Los Angeles, having played ball and having had contact with white athletes and so forth, Rickey knew that's what it would take to get along in Major League baseball. And he wasn't wrong.

INT: The constant push to integrate the Major Leagues, black leagues kind of got pushed out of business.
FB: Well, ah, I take -- I'll take -- I'll take -- I'll play the role of the devil -- devil's advocate in the - - in the, ah -- in the role that desegregation eliminates segregation and it also destroys certain things. For instance, black baseball. Now I am one in favor of the desegregation because of the opportunities that it gave black ball players not only to play ball and let the world see them play, but the economic conditions were better, pensions were better, all of that. Plus the fact young black baseball players (Clears Throat) could be brought into the Major Leagues and trained for the Major Leagues.

INT: What was Pittsburgh like in the '30s and '40s?
FB: In 1930 the City of Pittsburgh was a segregated, discriminating city. We did not get any fair play here until after the Equal Rights Law was passed, close to 19-- latter part of the '30s when Homer Brown put through legislature -- legislation in the legislature to give us equal rights. Negroes could not eat downtown. They could not try on clothes downtown, and when I entered the University of Pittsburgh, no blacks could eat or sleep in Oakland. We had to walk all the way from the Cathedral (Unintell.) over to Center Avenue-Wiley to sleep. Blacks could not play football or basketball at Pittsburgh, but they could run track. You had to sit upstairs in the theaters. It wasn't until the, ah, early part of the -- of, ah, the '40s, later '30s and '40s that we got fair housing.

INT: But Wiley Avenue was jumpin'.
FB: That's understandable. Everywhere you're segregated, you find your own way. Wiley Avenue did jump, but it jumped in a segregated way. It was the only place that white and blacks could meet without havin' a riot. That's where Billy Eckstein and all of them started. That's where the digitarians ran the numbers. That's where the churches were. That's where the synagogues were. As I said, all this existed while out in Oakland you couldn't sleep or eat there and you couldn't play football at the University of Pittsburgh.

INT: What were the major reasons for the decline of the black press?
FB: The major reasons for the decline of the black press was the desegregation in the country, the acceptance of integration, and the fact that the white press began to pick up the positive news of negroes. Third, cost of production. It costs money to put out a paper. Salaries had to come close to matching those of the daily press and then, the fourth, you did not get the advertising that the major newspapers got. You couldn't afford it.

INT: Talk about the families taking over.
FB: In general, families -- in the black press, there was a handicap in the fact that the papers passed from the original owners to the family and family members weren't as interested in it. In the main, they were not as interested in the paper as they're forefathers were. Father and sons -- The Baltimore American did better than any of the papers. The Murphys did very well. They trained one -- one of their men in the production, another one in business, and so forth and so on. Mr. Vann had no children, had no one the leave the paper to. When he died, he left it to his wife and she, in turn, had a committee runnin' it who didn't have the training for it. And, of course, the later papers, I don't -- the families didn't seem to have the same interest in the paper that their forefathers had.

INT: The papers were started by people who had a real fire in their belly.
FB: Not only that -- not only that; the papers were started by men who wanted to fight the cause of black people. They believed in that. Leaving the paper to the family, they didn't -- the young people who inherited the paper did not have the fire, not did they have the interest, nor the enthusiasm for working with African Americans except those of upper strata qualifications. The poorer class of people suffered by attention. They lacked -- we didn't give them the attention that they needed. And that exists even today.

INT: Talk about the effect of advertising.
FB: Advertising in black newspapers had its effect in the fact -- in the way that (Clears Throat) you can only criticize White America so far. If you criticize them the way we did in the old days, you wouldn't get the advertising. General Motors or a downtown department store is not going to let you blast White America on that front page and then give you a full-page ad on page four and five. Number two. You have the problem of hiring unskilled people. When I say "unskilled", I mean young people who have no command of the English language ...
DIRECTIONAL

INT: Who were the advertisers in the earlier black press?
FB: The advertising in the early black press we're ashamed of now. Hair ads, ah, sex ads, ah, ointment ads, and games of chance ads. And the advertiser that gave most of that business to the black press was Ziff, Z-i- double-f out of New York. We were their biggest consumers. Defender was next and the Afro-American third. We could not get major advertising. Such things as automobile advertising, industrial advertising was out.

INT: So when the black press did get those kinds of major advertisers, it cut into the freedom of the black press?
FB: That is correct. For instance, when -- when -- when I joined the newspapers and we were getting the advertising that we didn't like ... it hurt the status of the paper. We had to put up with that. We were ashamed of it really. And then, of course, when we began to get the big ads, we had to -- like all publications, we had to dance to the tune of the advertiser. And any daily newspaper today that tells you they don't is telling a lie. They dance to the tune of advertising. The media in this country, unfortunately, is controlled by advertising. That's why many people today listen to educational television as against commercial television.

INT: What were the ads like?
FB: The advertising in the early days was, ah, in my opinion, demeaning and very, very, ah, ahm ... damaging to the black press, particularly a paper like the Courier that carried heavy religious news, entertainment news, and so forth. Now here's an ad that's gonna tell you how to last six hours, four hours, ten hours, eight hours in some sexual exercise. Here's another one that tells you how to get all the women or all the men you want. Here's another ad advertising husbands and wives for sale. "Do you want a husband? Do you want a wife?" Today that would be known as a scam. Another one was the various, ah, tablets and the various liquid medicines you could take to sustain life, to sustain sexual life, to grow hair ... and the other -- the other -- the other, ah, add was the cure arthritis and rheumatism and heart trouble, which you couldn't do today. The government wouldn't allow you.

INT: Tell me why you personally left the black press.
FB: I left the black press for money and for opportunity. (Coughs) The salaries were better and the opportunities were greater. The black press could no longer do what I wanted to see done. They could not cover the country. They couldn't cover the world and, as I said to you earlier, they were concentrating solely on the life of black people, and that would not sustain the black press. Also, in much of the black press at the time, you had an opposition to college trained people. Many of them had never been themselves and they didn't -- they didn't hire them. They could have kept them. You take the Courier, for instance, Wendell Smith went to The Chicago Herald-American, Collins George, Free Press, George Brown to a chain of papers in the Virgin Islands. I went to The New York Times. Baltimore Afro-American had the same way. So you had to leave to better yourself.

INT: Tell me about your search for Dorie Miller.
FB: Well, I was sent to Washington to look for the -- see who this messman was and I went to Washington. First place I went was to the Navy and then they didn't have it. I went to the War Department and they were -- ah, we were privileged to look at the -- look at the records, the logs of the very ships that were in the harbor. And, ah, that took a long time and they had the mess -- they had the logs of the messmen, but they didn't have the messmen -- all the messmen that were on that ship. As a result, I was unable to do it. That's why we sent Pradis and he just stayed there. He stayed there four months. I couldn't -- they wouldn't -- they couldn't afford to keep me. I was just a reporter. See, Pradis was executive editor.
FB: As a result, I did not get the name of the messman because he wasn't listed as such. They kept very poor records.

INT: Tell me what's happening in that picture of them moving stuff out of the Courier.
FB: The Courier went broke. The United States government foreclosed on them. The building and the lots were -- the property was sold and everything inside was confiscated -- desks, chairs, rugs and all. That picture is the last items being carried out of the Courier. And I had worked there 27 years and I wanted that picture of the fall of the greatest news-- black newspaper in the country. That was it.

INT: What did the black press mean to you?
FB: The black press was the advocate of all of our dreams, wishes, and desires. It was also our number one fighter for equal and civil rights. It also gave young people, like myself at that time -- it gave us the inspiration to move ahead. Under Bob Vann's leadership, we made building stones out of stumbling blocks. We never let a man make us feel inferior without our consent. This self- esteem that you talk about today, we got it goin' in and we kept it. The black press made me conscious of the fact that I was truly an American and I deserved everything every other American got. If it did nothing more, it made me realize that separate does not mean equal. And ever since I worked at the Courier, I have been a battler and a champion for equal rights for all American citizens, regardless of their color, race, or creed. And now gender.

INT: Were there were differences in the black papers?
FB: Basically they weren't different. They were all fighting for equal rights. They had different ways of approaching it, different ways of explaining it ...
DIRECTIONAL
FB: But basically all the papers -- all the papers were basically the same. A lot of the black press was the same. People say that -- you bring up the subject of bein' monolithic and all of that. All of the papers waged a serious and sincere fight for equal rights. They had different ways of trying to achieve this, depending on the owner, depending on the environment where they were located, and methods of doing it. Some did it by persuasion. Some did it by coercion. Some did it by both. Some did it just by hammerin' away a it, but basically all of them were the same. They were -- the -- the theme there was equal rights for African Americans because negroes were the least privileged minority in America, and still are.

INT: Tell me the Pullman story again.
FB: The Pullman porters helped The Pittsburgh Courier with its circulation, ah, in an immeasurable number of ways. First of all, we were friendly with A. Philip Randolph and we would put those papers on the train here. The Pullman porters would watch them. They'd stand guard over them 'til they got to their destination in the Deep South, like Birmingham and -- and North Carolina and Florida and so forth. There minister down there who was our agent, he worked for the -- we paid him well -- he would meet that train at the station, he and his followers. And they would take the papers off the train, take 'em to their homes or someplace to store them until Sunday or even Saturday, and they would distribute 'em to their congregation's children, who were our newsboys and newsgirls. We built up a strong circulation in the South that way. We didn't lose the papers.

INT: Why'd you do that?
FB: We -- we used the Pullman porters -- ah, The Pittsburgh Courier used the Pullman porters to help with the circulation. We were friendly with A. Philip Randolph, who gave the porters permission to watch the papers when we put them on the train here to head to these Southern destinations, where, if we sent them on our own, as soon as they hit the station and the -- and the dock, the sheriff and others there would take the papers and burn them. But with the Pullman porters watching them and guarding them, they, in turn, would meet the minister at -- would meet the minister, ah, at the train, get the papers, and they would keep them 'til Friday or Saturday or Sunday and distribute 'em to their congregation. And the boys and girls would sell them for us.
IRRELEVANT

INT: Did you like working for the Courier?
FB: I worked 27 years for them. Yes, I did. They gave me a living. They gave me the opportunity to -- to, ah -- to travel around the world and meet people I never would have met before. I had the opportunity of living with Ghandi and Nehru for 15 and 11 days, respectfully ... So I loved the Courier. It taught me everything I knew.

INT: How did it feel to work for the Courier at its height?
FB: Back in the '40s it felt very good to be working for The Pittsburgh Courier and in fact you felt honored really to work for them because it was the most powerful black paper and you were able to do something for our people. You had a chance to cover them. You had a chance to meet them and talk with them and, above all, it built -- it built pride within yourself. You were proud of the fact that you were a negro. Also you had the opportunity to put some of your own ideas into operation. It also gave you a basis for a continuing fight to civil rights. Even today at my age, I'm still as interested in fighting for civil rights as I was when I first went to the Courier. And, of course, to see our young people move up meant a lot to promote them. You felt good promoting them.
DIRECTIONAL

INT: How did it feel to see them carrying all those things out when the Courier shut down?
FB: When the Courier went broke and they begin to move it out and the creditor moved in, ah, it was like a funeral. I still feel sad to day that we don't have the old Courier. I felt bad. Even when I went to work somewhere else, I still longed for the Courier because they taught me how to write, how to make up a newspaper, the value of news, and the value of being truthful. If it did nothing else, it kept you from bein' a pathological liar, which so many alleged leaders and so forth are today -- not at the Courier. So when I -- when I saw them moving it out, it was like the final cartage that goes to the cemetery and you bury the body and they say, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust." That's the way I felt about the Courier, and I still do. I still think it was the greatest advocate for equal and civil rights that black people ever had in America. It had an effect on everybody -- those who were privileged to get our education, those who didn't. It took care of the sharecropper and it took care of the high government employee or the college president.
(END INTERVIEW)