Sam Adams: reporter, teacher, mentor

By Manny Lopez
Associate Editor
The Business Journal, Kansas City, Mo.

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told Sam Adams that he thought the black press was doing a disservice to blacks in America, Adams thought for a minute and replied, "So is the black ministry."

It was 1954, and Adams was a reporter at the Atlanta Daily World. He had been friendly with King for years, and the two often debated their respective responsibilities.

Samuel Levi Adams Sr. Birth date: Jan. 25, 1926 Newspapers: Atlanta Daily World, reporter; Des Moines Register, copy editor; St. Petersburg Times, investigative reporter. Journalism educator: University of Wisconsin, University of South Florida, University of Kansas, Hampton University, University of the Virgin Islands. Awards: NABJ’s Lifetime Achievement Award, 1997; United Minority Media Association Distinguished Service to Journalism Award, 1996.

Covering the civil rights movement was important to Adams, an award-winning journalist. But teaching is his legacy.

I interviewed Adams by telephone from his home in Waycross, Ga. He talked about being a black reporter in the South. But more than that, he spoke about how important it was to be a part of educating young people of color.

I got to know Adams while I was recruiting students for the journalism school at the University of Kansas, where he spent more than 20 years teaching journalism. Students of color from many generations call him a mentor and adviser.

Manny Lopez: What do you remember most about the civil rights movement?

Sam Adams: Before a speech for the National Association of Black Journalists about three years ago, I awoke one night having shakes. I tell you this to show that the toll impacted me not during the work but afterward. After an assignment was completed, I sometimes had headaches. I was, for example, awfully sad when I was covering Martin King's funeral. Not crying or weeping doing the job, but saddened and tearful afterward. Deaths of people I knew in the movement impacted me. If I think about it, I cry a little bit.

When Martin finished his doctorate in theology and took a job in Montgomery, he and I argued about what the press should be doing. He talked about the black press, and at that time, I was working for the black press at the Atlanta Daily World. I argued with him about what the black ministry ought to be doing, because they owed their living to the black community.

There were other concerns I had about living in a segregated underclass. I criticized what seemed to be Martin’s acceptance of less than complete integration of the bus system. It's clearer to me now that the incremental approach he took was better than what I was encouraging in print.

Q: Did you realize at the time what Dr. Martin Luther King would become?

A: I was not in awe of him, but I had a great appreciation for him. He was not only great, he was honest and straightforward.

Q: Tell me about covering the civil rights movement.

A: The difficulty was that because hotels and motels were segregated, one would have to find places to stay. People always stayed with us in Waycross, so I had the resources to find places to stay to cover whatever it was. I traveled throughout the Southeast. I did fewer stories in Mississippi than in many places. I acknowledge I was selective. If I felt I couldn't go in and come out with the story, then it was useless to go in.

Q: How did you get into journalism?

A: I started at a time when it wasn't open to minorities, but I was told I could do anything I wanted to. I chose it over medicine.

Q: You received bachelor's degrees from West Virginia State College and Wayne State University…

A: Yes, and then I went into the Army and to the University of Minnesota (for a graduate degree). I left there and tried to find work. It wasn't easy. The local newspaper … it had its bit of color. They didn't want another. So I went south and began at the Atlanta Daily World, a training ground for a number of black professionals.

Q: At the time there were few opportunities in journalism for minorities. Why did you stick with it?

A: I was taught by my family and teachers that I could do anything I wanted to do. There was a strong need for blacks to define ourselves in the media. Even if it meant that I would need to go through a black newspaper, I was going to hang with it. When I came home and visited the local newspaper in Atlanta, the editor was eager to hire me. They offered $65 a week, and that's what I took.

During those times, I wanted to do something that allowed me to do some service and advance the cause of freedom. It could not happen until minorities began to define themselves rather than leaving it to the general community, which tended to ignore what was happening in segregated communities.

Q: How long did you stay at the Atlanta Daily World?

A: I stayed there two years -- long enough to get sued for writing about someone the police were investigating for firebombing homes. I didn't identify her by name, but she said she could prove that everyone thought it was her. Of course, it was she that the police were investigating. There was truth there.

My employer wanted me to move to another paper he had in Birmingham. I'd go there to work on occasions, but I didn't like that. So I continued to work in Atlanta until I took a trip to Des Moines to visit my sister and brother-in-law, who was a minister. I visited The Des Moines Register, and an editor decided to hire me.

Q: What year was that?

A: 1957, the year of Sputnik. I wanted to report. But I edited. Finally, they let me go on the police beat. But I still was unhappy, because of what happened when Little Rock exploded (the Little Rock Central High School desegregation). I'm editing the Little Rock stuff, and I'm being ordered to boil stories to eight inches. There was so much coming out of Little Rock, and I just had a need to get into the game again.

Since it wasn't happening in Des Moines, I decided to come back south. I was offered a job at the St. Petersburg Junior College as director of information and as an instructor of journalism. Pretty soon, the local newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, asked if I would work for them. I agreed to work for the newspaper, provided I didn't have to work for the black-news page. They said, "Well, you can change that." So, with the assurance that I could change it, I went to work for them.

I had one staff member under me, and we developed that page. I also began writing for the rest of the paper. The society pages were restricted to whites, and I wanted to change that. Before I wrote wedding and engagements stories and all, I chose to write a feature. My front-page sectional story had a picture of a white woman assisting a black woman. They accepted that very easily, because there was the class difference: The white woman was teaching the black woman how to write.

So then I said, "OK, now it's time to do a wedding story." A principal was going to marry a junior college teacher. I said, "This one's ideal. He has the prominence. This won't go into the black pages. This will go in the regular part of the newspaper." And I wrote it.

The staff questioned it. "Whites won't want their pictures in the paper," they said.

The publisher said, "Here's what you tell them. If they don't want their daughter on the same page with a black, then that's their problem."

It worked well. And we then found ourselves -- those pages -- desegregated.

Q: What kind of resistance did you get from public officials and even from white colleagues?

A: I gained their respect. But I could work around them, because my boss was Don Baldwin, editor and president of the St. Petersburg Times. Even the owner of the newspaper — Nelson Poynter -- was himself progressive. He was an unusual kind of person.

Q: They believed in you, which probably helped.

A: They said I could close the black page any time I wanted to, but it proved useful to me. If I wanted to promote something, I could on that page.

I ran my column there to promote and develop the academic cultural enrichment program. Since minorities were no smarter than whites who had all the privileges, we needed to spend more time on education. So, I organized an extension of the school day -- two hours in the afternoon immediately after school and four hours on Saturday morning -- across curriculum. It attracted 5,000 students in the countywide system.

Adams was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 and 1965. Stories he broke in 1967 in Mississippi and Florida helped lead to a national campaign to investigate hunger in America and helped result in changes in national policy for fighting hunger.

Q: You’ve had a long and successful career. What stands out?

A: Developing that after-school program and being a semi-finalist in the Lane Bryant Award for Volunteer Service (1966). A lot of things have happened since then, and each has been good. I obviously was honored when NABJ honored me, because I'd worked so hard to get it organized.

Q: Was there anything you regretted?

A: (Laughter). I never made any money, but it's been good.

Q: You've left lasting impressions on young people, and that’s valuable.

A: Those kids, they are the most precious things that I have. Following some of those stories was very important to me, but the people who make me look best are my former students. And I've had some wonderful students. I had two Pulitzer Prize winners in successive years, and no one else can claim that.

Q: When young people hear your story, what do you hope that they take away from it?

A: Go for your dream. But be sure your dream accrues something that is selfless. Make sure that it points toward service to others. You've got to reward yourself as you go, and you've got to make sure you are secure. But there are so many things you may do that allow service to others while providing for one's self. And if you do that, gosh, the rewards are going to be much greater than those you can put in the bank.

A: If you had one piece of advice to give to young journalists of color who are just starting out in the business, what would that advice be?

Q: Remember that journalism is the most important function in life. It's through communication that we define ourselves as individuals and as a society.

Manny Lopez was a 1994 Scholar at The Tennessean in Nashville. Reach him at mlopez@bizjournals.com,

Back to Top