Reflections of Courier Veterans

Robert Ellis Smith, What Was The Courier? One result of The Courier's professional journalism was to embarrass local news outlets into covering stories they were uncomfortable with reporting and to force the correspondents from national and international news organizations to report stories they otherwise would have missed.

Robert Ellis Smith, An Act of Patriotism. I went South to work on the Southern Courier as an act of patriotism. Not to “save black people,” but to “save my country.” I was outraged that there were parts of the country that I couldn’t travel safely in, that others could not travel freely in. I was outraged that in parts of the U.S., persons were denied the right to vote, to get a decent job, to stay in travel accommodations or eat in a restaurant of their choice.

Joan Clark Tornow, Memory’s Jagged Edge: Reflections on Birmingham, 1967. Not many white people had crossed the threshold into this black funeral home in Birmingham. Not in 1967. But here we were, two white women, investigating what we believed to be a murder. . . .

Jim Peppler, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement: A Narrated Slide Show. I had joined the paper in May of '65, inspired by the stories and words of many Americans then struggling in the South to end the system of segregation and oppression of citizens of color that many of us saw as inconsistent with . . . the founding principles of America.