Above all else, gratitude

One summer day in 1998 I drove to the office of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder at 38th Street and 4th Avenue in South Minneapolis, known then as the Minnesota Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder, and went inside to meet one of its publishers, Wallace “Jack” Jackman, about a volunteer opportunity. I was between jobs and the paper needed a proofreader. 

Jack and his sister Norma were the papers’ co-publishers at the time. Jack was friendly and enthusiastic, a no-nonsense businessman who shared a great sense of humor with his sister, a stand-up comedian in her own right. Unfortunately I came too late to meet the papers’ founder, Cecil Newman, who had passed away two years earlier. His widow, Launa Newman, continued as publisher.

Jack put me to work proofreading the Classifieds. In those pre-Craig’s List days, classified ads of all kinds could take up a full 6-8 pages. It was an important source of revenue for the paper, so mistakes could be costly. I’d come in late afternoon on go-to-print Tuesdays and spend several hours poring over ads after business hours.  

Gayle Anderson was the editor then. While I worked on ads, Gayle labored over last-minute copy and his own wry column. Jack‘s wife Linda stood at a sloped drafting table cutting and pasting the content from typed copy onto blank dummy pages — this after working in a bank all day. Once all pages were laid out and proofed we rushed them by courier to a printer in Shakopee, Minnesota, sometimes not until the wee dark hours. 

Often things did not go as planned and we were still at it after midnight pulling all the pieces together. But the paper never missed an issue — not then, not in the preceding 60 years, and not in the 30 years since. That itself is something to be proud of considering the countless obstacles to overcome week after week, month after month over those 91 years. 

The publishers brought the papers from the old days of lead typesetting in the back room into the modern world of computers, emails, scanners, printers. The old IBM Selectrics went out the back door as the new IBM PCs came in the front. They remodeled the original building to accommodate a growing staff. I went from proofreading ads to proofing other copy, then to writing and editing. 

What I recall most vividly from my near-30 years with what is now one paper, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, are the many wonderful, remarkable, talented people it was my great good fortune to meet and work with. Foremost, of course, the publishers, always generous with their praise, forgiving of shortcomings and tolerant of stubborn ways. I hesitate to even begin naming the others because there are so many and some must get left out. 

I salute up front Tracey Williams-Dillard, the paper’s current publisher and CEO, for accepting the torch from her grandmother and carrying on the newspaper’s tradition in the spirit intended by its founder, as befits its Black Press heritage. But as Tracey knows, what keeps the newspaper useful and relevant are its contributors — the reporters, assigning editors, columnists, photographers, graphic designers, wordsmiths, storytellers, advisers, secret sources and late-night informants — all the amazing contributors who make a newspaper something people want to read. 

And who greatly enriched my life along the way.

Hundreds of voices have found thousands of readers on these pages. These are just a few of the contributors I most appreciated hearing and learning from: Kwame and Mary and Mitchell P. McDonald, Matthew Little, Ron Edwards, Gayle Anderson, Charles Hallman, Pat Crutchfield and much later Dr. Charles Crutchfield III, Shannon Gibney, Booker T. Hodges, Dwight Hobbes, Sheletta Brundidge, Robin James, James L. Stroud, Isaac Peterson, Abdel Shakur, Lucky Rosenbloom, Mother Atum, Emmett Timmons, Raymond Boyd, Travis Lee, Tony Kiene, Michael Diehl, Vickie Evans-Nash, Paige Elliott, Stephanie Booker, Mel Reeves, Tom McNellis, Ken Foxworth, Spike Moss, Mary Turk, Stephenetta Harmon, Jennifer Jackman, Al Brown, Larry Fitzgerald, Laura Pohlman, Merle “Buster” Cooper…and oh so many more. 

Now at last I find myself back where I began, having come full circle over a quarter century of work on behalf of the MSR. I like the symmetry of it. Once again I proofread stories and pages every week, not so much classifieds now but plenty of good writing, helping create something fine and clean and error-free the whole community can be proud of. Helping make Cecil and Launa, Jack and Norma proud of their legacy. 

For that matter, helping make Minnesota a better place for everyone. The MSR mattered then and it matters now. The Spokesman-Recorder seems to me well positioned to lead this generation’s Black Press just in time to speak harsh truths to power as we face the greatest threats to Black civil rights in my lifetime since those ugly Barry Goldwater and George Wallace days. 

When so much is at stake, the Black Press has always been in the forefront of the struggle. I am proud to see our work and sacrifices over the years have not been in vain, and the MSR still stands in the vanguard of resistance to oppression and injustice under the guidance of its current editor, Jasmine McBride, clearly a rising star.

Now whenever I think of the MSR I recall all these names, see all these faces, remember our adventures in journalism together, the stories we told and the ones that got away, and above all else I give thanks for the privilege of having made your acquaintance.