Black Workers Strike Liberal Newspaper, Allege Racism

On the eve of the South’s collision with the civil rights movement, a little-known newspaper in the Mississippi Delta won a Pulitzer Prize for a stridently anti-racist editorial titled, “Go for Broke.”

Today, that slogan is being used as a rallying cry by blacks who say the same newspaper, the Delta Democrat Times, practices racism. A walkout by 19 of the paper’s black employees is entering its fourth week with no end in sight.

The late Hodding Carter Jr., who won the Pulitzer in 1946 and continued to be a lone voice in a segregationist wilderness long afterward, would be appalled by the charges being leveled against his newspaper.

“The Delta Democrat Times shows arrogant contempt for black employees,” reads one of 22 grievances listed by a group called Coalition of Media Workers.

Until recently, nearly all of the employees in the blue-collar pressroom, mailroom and circulation departments were black; most of the workers in the white-collar editorial and advertising departments were white. The strikers’ grievances stem in part from differences in working conditions in the two areas of the plant.

“The Delta Democrat Times’ black employees freeze during the winter due to the lack of heating of the facility,” one complaint read. Black employees “burn in the summer due to the lack of air conditioning of the facility.”

Another complaint charged that blacks of both sexes are forced to share one bathroom while “not a single white employee functions in this hazardous situation.”

Vernon DeBolt, publisher of the 13,200-circulation paper since early this year, denied the charges and defended the newspaper’s minority hiring record. Five of seven department heads are minorities, he said.

DeBolt said blacks are welcome to use any restroom in the building. And he said he wasn’t aware of the heating problem, but will repair a broken heater. He said the strikers had never complained to him about the working conditions.

On a cold morning recently, six strikers stood across the street from the paper’s plant and paced back and forth with crudely written signs. They said the problems started with the hiring of a new circulation manager and a circulation director in August. Things in that department quickly started to change, the strikers said.

“Our beef with Mr. DeBolt is that he let these two new guys with no experience come in and start bullying us around,” said Edna Moreton, who was fired from her job along with two other circulation district managers. Circulation manager Harold Jones said they helped organize the strike.

“The rumor going around was that the new administration was going to clean house,” she said, holding a sign that read, “We’ll Be There When DDT Be Fair.”

That rumor was not entirely untrue, DeBolt said.

“We hired a circulation manager to come in here and turn our circulation department around,” he said. “If you look at our circulation for the last five years, you would see steady declines every year. Unless we want to just fade out into oblivion, you’ve got to turn it around sometime.”

DeBolt said Jones has circulation experience with 37 newspapers.

The fuse was lighted Sept. 25 when Jones fired Dorothy Ringold, a black district manager and five-year employee. Jones said he found a stack of unattended subscription cancellation notices in Ringold’s desk, and fired her for not doing her job.

A white man was given the position.

Ringold could not be reached for comment.

“The word went around that more were going to go,” said striker Milton Curtis. “We weren’t just going to stand around and wait for a brick to fall on our heads.”

On Sept. 29--Sunday morning--15 people did not show up for work. More than 30 independent paper carriers also skipped work, and DeBolt said many informed him they were told by the district managers there would be no newspaper that day.

DeBolt and others tried to fill in the gaps and get the paper out.

The next day, the count was 19 employees absent, all black. Those remaining worked two jobs until replacements could be found.

Things are slowly returning to normal and strikers are now only periodically seen outside the newspaper complex, where a police car sits nearby. Most of the replacements are black, Jones said, and all the paper routes have been resumed despite the fact that many of the striking district managers took their subscriber lists with them.

DeBolt said he wants to talk with the striking employees. So far, the two sides haven’t met.

But any suggestion of racism threatens to stain the liberal image of the 53-year-old Delta Democrat Times.

When Hodding Carter Jr. died in 1972, his son, Hodding Carter III, took over. He left for Washington in 1977 to become State Department spokesman under President Jimmy Carter.

Freedom Newspapers, a generally conservative newspaper group, bought the Times in 1980. But staffers say the old ways haven’t changed much.

“I’m a little bit hurt they would even bring up race,” said Editor Ken Cazalas, who covered the civil rights struggle in northern Mississippi for United Press International during the 1960s. “I’ve spent a whole career battling racism. It just doesn’t make sense.”