Freedom Summer

September 28, 2010 World Screen

This column originally appeared in the MIPCOM 2010 issue of World Screen.

In late September, as we do every year, the International Academy presented its awards for distinguished work in news reporting. Predictably, some of the nominees were young, aggressive and based in war zones.  

As we stroll the Croisette in Cannes this week doing our work, it’s worth remembering that we have colleagues in this business who put their lives on the line every day doing theirs.
 
Life and death are a matter of course for many young reporters and have been for as long as the human race has wanted news of conflict and needed reporters to go get it. When I was a reporter many years ago, I faced dangers that pale in comparison with those that many of our nominees have confronted in their own work. But those formative experiences—of confronting fear and overcoming it—have left me with a lifelong appreciation for what reporters go through, and the risks they take, to get the story.
 
The episode I remember most vividly occurred in the summer of 1964, when I was a reporter for Life magazine, then the preeminent source of news for most Americans and many other people around the world. The Korean War was long over, and the Vietnam War was just beginning. The field of fire for American news orga-nizations was the segregated American South, and Ground Zero was the state of Missis-sippi. On a hot, steamy day in August 1964, folk singer Pete Seeger and I got off an airplane in Jackson, Mississippi. Pete was one of the country’s preeminent musicians, and a liberal icon. Indeed, he had been blacklisted in the ’50s, and this Life story, after it was printed, would be his return to the mainstream media. As we walked into the terminal, Pete was accosted by a middle-aged man who pushed him against the wall, spit in his face, and hissed, “You liberal, communist Northerners should get out of here, or we know how to take care of you.” He meant me, too. They particularly hated Life reporters in Mississippi that summer.
 
Of course, we did not go back North; instead, we went to one of the places where young volunteers from the North were fighting segregation during what came to be called “Freedom Summer.” Pete sang there, and we traveled throughout Mississippi for the week that followed with similar performances at other encampments. Hanging over everyone that summer was the disappearance in June of three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. By the night of August 4, we were in Meridian, Mississippi, where we got word that the three had been murdered, and their bodies had been found in nearby Philadelphia, Mississippi. The FBI said it would announce late that night where the bodies were, and journalists should be ready. When I called the Life office in New York to ask what I should be doing, their only comment was, “Why are you still with Pete Seeger? You should be in Philadelphia.”
 
So, off I went with photographers from Life and the Associated Press. The arrangement with the FBI was that if I called them at 11 p.m., they would tell us where the bodies were being unearthed. We drove around for a while, bought gas from someone who later was convicted for the murders, and stopped so I could call the FBI. No cell phones then, but there was a convenient pay phone across from the gas station. As I made the call, the phone booth was surrounded by tough looking young guys with clubs and guns who had been following us for a while. I asked the FBI agent, a Southerner from Mississippi, if he had any advice. In a deep drawl he replied, “No, sir, I sure don’t have any advice, but I surely want to wish you the best of luck.”
 
So, with my heart pounding, I simply walked out of the booth, jumped into the car and took off. Dumb luck. Had I stopped for a second or even made eye contact, I would have been pulverized. At least that’s what the New York Times chief civil rights correspondent, Homer Bigart, told me a few days later. Soon we were at the dam where the bodies had been buried—and the threat to me, however fleeting, was over. But I have never forgotten it.
 
The young men and women who cover today’s many conflicts, often in much more dangerous circumstances than mine, will benefit from the fact that they put themselves, even briefly, in harm’s way. And that’s a big part of the International News Emmys, and one of the reasons we are so proud of the recipients.
 
Our story on Pete Seeger was published in Life later that summer. He once again became acceptable to the mainstream media and has been performing with charm and brilliance ever since.