JOURNALISM 234
Reporting on the American South
Tuesdays, 8:30 - 11 am
Room B-1, North Gate Hall
Course Description and Schedule
Readings, Visitors, Screenings, Assignments
Spring Semester, 2002
Neil Henry, professor
No region of the nation more sharply reflects its greatest dreams and tragedies than the American South. The South was represented in the 13 original colonies, attracted multitudes of early European immigrants who pursued dreams of freedom and wealth in the plantation system, and exerted great influence in the very formation of the American identity and political system.
Yet we also know that the South has bestowed on the nation some of the worst horrors of our history and starkest violations of its constitutional ideals. In a land dedicated to the freedom and equality of man, blacks were enslaved for centuries to be freed only after a devastating civil war in which millions perished. For many decades afterward blacks were relegated to a third class citizenship and deprived of most political and economic rights in a repressive system legally sanctioned by the southern states. While the South today is obviously a far different place from the one it was a century ago under Jim Crow laws and two centuries ago under slavery, many of the same issues that shape, define, and divide us as a people -- race and class chief among them -- arguably remain more compellingly real and meaningful there than anywhere else in America.
This class examines southern history, culture, and contemporary events with the chief aim of preparing you to spend eight days in Atlanta in late March, reporting, writing, photographing, and broadcasting stories. These "stories" are perhaps better termed journalistic projects which you will develop and research in the weeks before the trip, report during your time in Georgia, and produce there and upon your return. You will devise these projects on your own, but in close consultation and with heavy feedback and criticism from your classmates and instructor. I will work as an educator, advisor, and editor. Your job, as journalists, will be to perform your work inside and outside of class with energy and independence, and to think of yourselves as a team in the weeks ahead, providing support for each other.
We will be staying in a hotel located near a hub of subway lines in the logistical heart of the city’s business and nightclub district, and will share cars for transport to and from your assignments. I will also make an advance trip to Atlanta in March before your visit to teach a few classes at our sister school, Clark-Atlanta University. Your airfare, room and board will be paid by the university, and you will be given a limited cash advance. But like all working professionals you will be responsible for keeping track of your expenses while in Atlanta, and must file an accurate accounting upon your return if you hope to be reimbursed by the university.
You will, in short, be treated as professionals and are expected to behave and perform as such. In class, you will be responsible for leading discussions of course readings ranging from Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full, to Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer Prize winning history of the civil rights movement, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. We will also screen and discuss a number of documentaries and films from among such varied works as Eyes on the Prize, Birth of a Nation, Harvest of Shame, In the Heat of the Night, Gone With the Wind, and two terrific independents, Dear Jesse and Confederacy Theory.
Among our visitors will be former J-School Prof. Bernard Taper, who will discuss his writing for The New Yorker during the civil rights movement in the 1950s; Prof. William Drummond, who covered the movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. during his early days as a reporter in Kentucky; Gary Pomerantz, a journalist and author who until recently covered race and culture for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, knows Atlanta thoroughly and will serve as an advisor and fixer for the class; and Berkeley historian Leon Litwack, arguably the nation’s leading authority on America’s racial history, who will discuss a disturbing new book, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, which documents the history of lynching in the South and elsewhere in America through the use of unusual cultural artifacts: photographs of lynching scenes sent in the form of postcards.
In the pages ahead, in an addendum to this syllabus, I and a few former J-School students now working at the Washington Post and New York Times offer advice about the ways you might go about thinking about your projects. I also have attached a book review I wrote recently for Mother Jones magazine, about a devastating 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to show some contemporary issues of national concern related to the South and race, including the issue of black reparations. (It’s important to remember that the projects you focus on must have some significance for audiences outside the South. In other words, consider the wider context of any story you pursue, so that it matters to readers and viewers outside the South. In this vein, it might help to view your upcoming assignment conceptually as a foreign correspondent might in covering a distant land: Prepare well, and make your work relevant for the folks back home.)
First, though, here is a tentative schedule for the class,
which is highly flexible, depending on time availability and student progress.
(Please note too that an additional session or two might be scheduled,
most likely on coming Saturdays or evenings.)
Jan 22 -- Course overview, identification terms assigned, Atlanta guides and maps assigned, Atlanta politics, demographics, economy assigned. Screening: Mississippi: Is This America?, 1962-64. Read Pearl’s Secret for next session, monitor Atlanta newspapers and magazines.
Jan 29 -- Discussion of Pearl’s Secret, historical terms, Atlanta in the news. Read Black Boy for next session. Monitor Atlanta newspapers and magazines.
Feb 5 -- Discussion of Black Boy, Atlanta in the news, student reports on project progress, Confederacy Theory screening. Read selected chapters of Parting the Waters for next session. Monitor Atlanta newspapers and magazines.
Feb 12 -- Discussion of selected chapters of Parting the Waters. Atlanta in the news. Read To Kill a Mockingbird and Louisville magazine article on Martin Luther King, Jr. for next session. Monitor Atlanta newspapers and magazines.
Feb 19 -- Discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird. Screening of Birth of a Nation. Atlanta in the news. Visit by Prof. Drummond to discuss Martin Luther King, Jr.
Feb 26 -- Progress reports due on project research. Visit by Prof. Leon Litwack, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Atlanta in the news. Monitor Atlanta newspapers and magazines. Read New Yorker articles for next session. Monitor Atlanta newspapers and magazines.
March 5 -- Visit by Prof. Taper. Atlanta in the news. Read A Man in Full for next session.
March 12 -- Visit by journalist and author Gary Pomerantz. Atlanta in the news. Student research reports due, story ideas refined, lists of interviews and tentative reporting plan for the Atlanta week presented.
March 19 -- Dear Jesse screening. Final preparations for the trip, reporting projects refined.
March 23 -- 31: Reporting trip to Atlanta.
April 2 -- May 14: The remaining class sessions will be
devoted to editing and rewriting work, additional readings and screenings,
polishing projects, erecting the class web pages, and the screening and
presentation of student works.
Reading
Following are the required books for this course, in the order you will read them.
Pearl’s Secret, Neil Henry, University of California Press, 2001. You may purchase it online or at bookstores, or at UC Press itself down in the hill on Hearst Avenue. $24.95.
Black Boy, Richard Wright, HarperPerennial, 1998 edition, $13.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, any paperback edition, $6.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, Taylor Branch, Simon and Schuster, 1988, $16. We will read selected chapters. You may purchase the book, or share with each other, or acquire from the library.
A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe. We will read selected chapters. You may purchase the book, or share with each other, or acquire from the library.
We will also use material from the following books, which you will not need to acquire:
Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906, Mark Bauerlein, Encounter Books, 2001.
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, Twin Palms, 2000
Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow,
Leon Litwack, Vintage, 1998
Student Projects
Feel free to explore and produce work in whatever medium you choose. I will entertain a wide array of media possibilities for your work, everything from photographs and film documentation, to oral history, web publication, radio and television works, and newspaper and magazine articles. My chief requirement is that you think out your project thoroughly, plan well for your trip, and make sure that your project is significant and worthy enough to interest audiences outside the South. You are encouraged to seek outlets for your work, but professional publication or broadcast is not required for a passing grade in this class.
As a starting point, please read Sherri Day’s memo on
story ideas, Chris Jenkins’ memo regarding his stories from the South,
my e-mail message of advice to a recent J-School graduate now working as
a community reporter at the Nashville Tennessean, and as much as you can
about current events in the Atlanta region. The greatest charge you can
get out of a course like this will derive from the degree of passion, energy,
and native curiosity you bring to a process that allows much freedom for
you to explore.
Clark-Atlanta University
This class is made possible by a grant shared jointly
by Berkeley and Clark-Atlanta University, an historically-black undergraduate
school. You are encouraged to make contacts at CAU and to use the tremendous
local knowledge and expertise of its faculty and students. Film and
video students are free to make use of the fine production and editing
facilities CAU, and are invited to contribute their work for broadcast
on the Atlanta public broadcasting affiliate, which CAU manages. You will
also take part in a forum at CAU to explain your interest in journalism,
your ambitions, and your experiences at Berkeley, which will be filmed
for future broadcast on the PBS affiliate.
Contact Information
Neil Henry
Room B-36, North Gate Hall
Telephone: (o) 510-642-5999, (h) 530-756-8782
e-mail: nhenry@uclink.berkeley.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays, 1 -- 4 PM, and by appointment