The man from Jet who battled Jim Crow
At the Till murder trial, Simeon Booker (foreground) and fellow black journalists were segregated from the regular reporter pool and forced to work at a small card table in the back of the courtroom
Madison Darbyshire
DECEMBER 15, 2017
Before Barack Obama ran, Martin Luther King marched, Rosa Parks sat and Simeon Booker wrote.
Booker, a black reporter for Jet and Ebony magazines whose stories shocked the US and galvanised support for the civil rights movement, died on December 10 at age 99.
When Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago, was tortured to death in Mississippi in August 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Booker covered the funeral. He stood beside Till’s mother as she threw open the coffin and removed the rubber bag from her son’s mutilated face, and recorded her famous cry, “Darling, you have not died in vain. Your life has been sacrificed for something.”
Jet magazine was the only publication to run David Jackson’s photo of Till, and the story sparked fresh outrage. The issue sold out and was reprinted, reigniting calls for an end to the era of black oppression.
With the eyes of the nation on them, Booker and a team of 12 black reporters went to Mississippi to cover the Till murder trial. Black journalists were segregated from the regular reporter pool and forced to work at a small card table in the back of the courtroom.
Booker, though familiar with the indignities of segregation, later wrote that, as a northerner, he was unprepared for the “state-condoned terror” in Mississippi at the time.
Black journalists reported from the south at great personal risk. Booker once escaped from a manhunt in the back of a hearse; and slept on floors when hotels turned him away.
A month after Till was killed, the two white men accused of his murder were acquitted after just 67 minutes of deliberation. In December the same year, devastated by the story of Till’s murder, Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, widely considered to be the start of the civil rights movement in America.
Known simply as “the man from Jet”, Booker, in his signature bow tie and glasses, attended most of the major events of the civil rights struggle. He was the only reporter aboard the 1961 “Freedom Rides”, a bus trip across the south protesting against the refusal of southern states to implement a Supreme Court order to integrate interstate transport. A violent mob attacked Booker’s bus. He was rescued and taken to safety at a local preacher’s house.
There, he took a call from attorney-general Robert F Kennedy to explain the day’s events. “That was probably the best reporting I did in my journalism career,” Booker told Ebony, “explaining to Kennedy what happened.”
Booker saw journalism as a way of pursuing the struggle against racial inequality. “I wanted to fight segregation on the front lines,” he said. “I wanted to dedicate my writing to the cause. Segregation was beating down my people.
“I stayed on the road, covering civil rights day and night. The names, the places and the events became history.”
Booker had been set on becoming a reporter from a young age. “Teaching and preaching were the best advances for blacks at the time. But I wanted to write,” he told the Vindicator newspaper.
Booker’s first job at Baltimore Afro-American in 1942 paid $18 a week. At the Cleveland Call and Post, he won numerous awards for his coverage of ghetto education and housing. He attended Harvard with the prestigious Nieman Fellowship in 1950, the second black man to do so. Afterwards, Booker worked for two years at the Washington Post where he was the first black staff writer. But, despite his experience, in segregated Washington DC, he was still treated like a “cub reporter”
He left for Johnson Publishing, and became the Washington bureau chief for Jet and Ebony magazines, a position he held for more than 50 years, joining the White House press corps and covering 10 presidents. He retired from Jet in 2007, at the age of 88.
Booker won numerous awards, including a National Press Club Fourth Estate award for his contribution to journalism. In 2013, he was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Booker is survived by his second wife, Carol, three children and many grandchildren.
“What I’d like to be remembered for,” he said in his NPC acceptance speech, “is that the preacher’s son tried to put into journalism the values that his father said were missing — integrity, compassion for people, and service to all Americans regardless of race, creed or colour.”
At the Till murder trial, Simeon Booker (foreground) and fellow black journalists were segregated from the regular reporter pool and forced to work at a small card table in the back of the courtroom
Madison Darbyshire
DECEMBER 15, 2017
Before Barack Obama ran, Martin Luther King marched, Rosa Parks sat and Simeon Booker wrote.
Booker, a black reporter for Jet and Ebony magazines whose stories shocked the US and galvanised support for the civil rights movement, died on December 10 at age 99.
When Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago, was tortured to death in Mississippi in August 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Booker covered the funeral. He stood beside Till’s mother as she threw open the coffin and removed the rubber bag from her son’s mutilated face, and recorded her famous cry, “Darling, you have not died in vain. Your life has been sacrificed for something.”
Jet magazine was the only publication to run David Jackson’s photo of Till, and the story sparked fresh outrage. The issue sold out and was reprinted, reigniting calls for an end to the era of black oppression.
With the eyes of the nation on them, Booker and a team of 12 black reporters went to Mississippi to cover the Till murder trial. Black journalists were segregated from the regular reporter pool and forced to work at a small card table in the back of the courtroom.
Booker, though familiar with the indignities of segregation, later wrote that, as a northerner, he was unprepared for the “state-condoned terror” in Mississippi at the time.
Black journalists reported from the south at great personal risk. Booker once escaped from a manhunt in the back of a hearse; and slept on floors when hotels turned him away.
A month after Till was killed, the two white men accused of his murder were acquitted after just 67 minutes of deliberation. In December the same year, devastated by the story of Till’s murder, Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, widely considered to be the start of the civil rights movement in America.
Known simply as “the man from Jet”, Booker, in his signature bow tie and glasses, attended most of the major events of the civil rights struggle. He was the only reporter aboard the 1961 “Freedom Rides”, a bus trip across the south protesting against the refusal of southern states to implement a Supreme Court order to integrate interstate transport. A violent mob attacked Booker’s bus. He was rescued and taken to safety at a local preacher’s house.
There, he took a call from attorney-general Robert F Kennedy to explain the day’s events. “That was probably the best reporting I did in my journalism career,” Booker told Ebony, “explaining to Kennedy what happened.”
Booker saw journalism as a way of pursuing the struggle against racial inequality. “I wanted to fight segregation on the front lines,” he said. “I wanted to dedicate my writing to the cause. Segregation was beating down my people.
“I stayed on the road, covering civil rights day and night. The names, the places and the events became history.”
Booker had been set on becoming a reporter from a young age. “Teaching and preaching were the best advances for blacks at the time. But I wanted to write,” he told the Vindicator newspaper.
Booker’s first job at Baltimore Afro-American in 1942 paid $18 a week. At the Cleveland Call and Post, he won numerous awards for his coverage of ghetto education and housing. He attended Harvard with the prestigious Nieman Fellowship in 1950, the second black man to do so. Afterwards, Booker worked for two years at the Washington Post where he was the first black staff writer. But, despite his experience, in segregated Washington DC, he was still treated like a “cub reporter”
He left for Johnson Publishing, and became the Washington bureau chief for Jet and Ebony magazines, a position he held for more than 50 years, joining the White House press corps and covering 10 presidents. He retired from Jet in 2007, at the age of 88.
Booker won numerous awards, including a National Press Club Fourth Estate award for his contribution to journalism. In 2013, he was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Booker is survived by his second wife, Carol, three children and many grandchildren.
“What I’d like to be remembered for,” he said in his NPC acceptance speech, “is that the preacher’s son tried to put into journalism the values that his father said were missing — integrity, compassion for people, and service to all Americans regardless of race, creed or colour.”
