Clifton Adcock |
When I went to a rehearsal for the Miss Black Muskogee Pageant, I wanted more than a typical who, what, when, where and why story.
I wanted to turn the story into an examination of what constitutes “beauty” and how this concept differs from culture to culture.
What I got was a lesson in why tension exists between black members of the Muskogee community and the city's established institutions.
I talked to two gentlemen who were organizing the contestants’ escorts, asking them how the concept of beauty in the white culture might differ from the concept in black culture.
They began telling me about what they saw as the differences, but they also shared their views of institutional racism and a distrust and fear of institutions including police, local governments and even the community’s newspaper.
The reason behind the distrust was obvious to them: The majority of people in the institutions are white. Many blacks are shut out of job opportunities because they do not hear about openings, said the two.
This results in higher unemployment in the black community or many blacks working in jobs with little upward movement. This, in turn, leads to increases in crime and drug-use rates, as well as a perpetual sense of hopelessness. The problem, they said, is that no one tries to understand why there are problems in Muskogee's black community, and the cycle continues.
This seemed to be an issue that had received little attention, so I went to work on it.
Photos by Muskogee (Okla.) Daily Phoenix & Times-Democrat |
I started by requesting Equal Employment Opportunity Commission documents about the major players in Muskogee -- the city, the county, the newspaper, the schools and Muskogee's largest employers. I wasn't looking for the number of African-American employees, but rather how many African Americans hold management positions.
My requests met resistance.
The city gave me its numbers, but the county was a different story. When I asked the county clerk for the EEOC reports, she said she was not sure if she could release them. (Under the Oklahoma Open Records Act, these reports are public.) She called the district attorney to ask. A couple of minutes later, she told me I would have to wait until it was clear that what I wanted was open to the public. (Under the Oklahoma Open Records Act, access to and copies of most public documents must be provided when requested.)
I wrote a story about the county’s response and the Oklahoma Open Records Act. The next day, the district attorney called and told me to go get the documents.
I was able to get EEOC reports from the city, county, hospital (a public trust and one of the top five employers in the area), newspaper and school district. Other private businesses were not willing to share their EEOC reports, with some saying it would be “inflammatory.”
With few exceptions, most of the EEOC reports showed a large gap in the number of African Americans in management and leadership positions when compared to U.S. Census population numbers. (About 19 percent of the City of Muskogee's population and about 13 percent of Muskogee County is African American.) Some institutions, such as the county, had no African Americans in leadership positions.
Once I had all the reports I was going to get, my next step was to contact experts. I talked to professors in African-American studies in other parts of the country and asked about the impact of this gap.
I used one of the gentlemen I spoke to at the Miss Black Muskogee Pageant rehearsal as an example of people affected by the news.
After talking to more sources (local NAACP leaders and public officials), I was ready to write.
Using what Gannett refers to as the “First Five Graphs” style of writing (news, context, impact, human element and what's next/a solution), I outlined why the lack of diversity matters, what it causes, people who are affected by it and what, if anything, was being done to correct the problem.
None of this could have been done without the help and support of my editor. An editor’s support is one of the most important things when working on a story that digs beyond a headline.
After the story and an accompanying editorial were published in February, there were several calls and e-mails to the newspaper -- some angry, some supportive. For many in the African-American community, the story was something they already knew. Hopefully, for those who didn't know, it opened a few eyes.
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