Reaction: Otis Sanford and Race Issues in the Media

On Wednesday November 16 I attended the “Memphis Centered” series featuring Otis Sanford along with Professor McKinney and Professor Nelson. Sanford lead the discussion and answered questions regarding his new book, “From Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics.” One topic I found most interesting was the role of the media in Memphis during the civil rights era. In the discussion, Sanford noted that mayor Henry Loeb condemned the Sanitation Strike. Throughout the strike, Loeb wanted the public to believe the protests were purely labor disputes. Because Memphis newspapers from the political left and right backed Loeb, the civil rights issues were completely left out of most coverage. Sanford claimed where the mass population of whites believed race relations to be “fine,” the media “failed” to bring to the surface the real struggles of the black community. One moment during the lecture that even surprised me was when one white man in the crowd stated that he personally believed race relations in Memphis to be fine throughout the Sanitary Strike. This statement made me wonder about the nature of this thinking from the man and Memphians during the civil rights movement in general. To be specific, was this “misunderstanding” really because of the media or was it because whites wanted to avoid racial conflict? Wouldn’t most people be aware enough of race issues across the U.S. to observe how this strike might be connected to civil rights? This topic is just as important today it is just as necessary for the media to accurately and clearly uphold the reality of race issues, protests and debates. For example, much of the controversy surrounding Collin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protests were due to beliefs that he was “disrespecting” veterans.  Many media sources covering the event failed to mention that the kneeling was actually the result of discussion with an army veteran on a way to protest that would be more respectful than sitting. I personally did not know about this until I entered this class and did more in depth research into the story. Many media sources even twisted the meaning of the “Black Lives Matter” protest. Many stories portrayed the movement as violent and even Anti-Police. So many different interpretations of the meaning of the protest resulted in a large portion of people questioning its true motive. Some even believed the movement to be exclusive and focus should be shifted to “all lives matter.”  In addition, Dr. Frederick Staidum in his lecture “Going Forward to Where We’ve Been,” noted how the media labeled many poor black victims in Louisiana of hurricane Katrina “refugees.” With an increasing variety of sources for news going forward, these media sources need to take more responsibility for how they portray race issues and black folk in general.

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