J-Speaks: The Passing of A Legendary Journalist

To become great at something you have to have a passion for it. You have to set solid goals that you will hold yourself to in becoming great at that craft. Many African American journalist had that in a man born in the south of the United States who at the beginning of his career worked at a major sports magazine; became a big time columnist; a regular on political shows for stations like CBS, NBC and ABC and was the a man who sought to publish stories that fought against segregation and racism. The world said goodbye to that beacon of journalism last month.

Back on Aug. 20, award-winning journalist, editor and longtime black press champion George E. Curry passed away at a hospital in Takoma Park, MD. He was 69 years old.

He is survived by his son, Edward; his mother Martha Brownlee, three sisters and a granddaughter.

His partner Ann Ragland told The Washington Post that Curry passed away after he was taken to the emergency room. The immediate cause of death was not known. She also said that Mr. Curry had a heart attack a year ago.

“I am heartbroken to learn that Mr. George Curry has passed. He has been a beacon for so many and a pivotal voice among black publishers. His strength and pursuit for the truth will carry on in the lives he touched,” National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) President Sarah Glover said back on Aug. 21.

“I had a chance to talk with him recently at the Democratic National Convention. His 5,000 watt smile stays etched in my mind. On behalf of the entire NABJ family, our thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones.”

Curry was born on Feb. 23, 1947 in Tuscaloosa, AL, and grew up in the housing projects in the segregated south.

The aforementioned Martha Brownlee, who was a domestic worker and his father Homer Lee’s occupation was a mechanic.

Upon graduation from Druid High School, Curry attended Knoxville College, a historically black liberal arts college in Knoxville, TN, where he was the quarterback and co-captain of the school’s football team. He also served on the schools board of trustees and was the editor of the sport section of the school’s paper.

For two summers, Mr. Curry studied at Yale and Harvard University.

After graduating from college in 1970, Curry worked for Sports Illustrated and then moved onto the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where in his first year with the paper had 25 published stories that made the front page.  

He also during this time published a biography of black football coach Jake Gaither in 1977.

Mr. Curry made his mark of telling stories about what took place in the African American community from racism, poverty and national politics in 1983 when he worked for the Chicago Tribune.

One year later, he covered the presidential campaign, which included Rev. Jessie Jackson and vice-presidential campaigns of Geraldine Ferraro and George H.W. Bush.

What put Mr. Curry on the map of the journalism world was his time as the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Emerge,” that was founded in 1989 by Time magazine reporter Wilmer C. Ames, Jr.

It was a monthly magazine that was the news-oriented rival to well-known monthly magazines like Ebony and Essence that were aimed to the African American audience.

Mr. Curry, who became the top editor at Emerge in 1993 once said to the Washington City Paper that the goal was to turn the magazine into one where, “people can think of us as a black Time or Newsweek, or, better yet, think of them as a white Emerge.”  

To reach this goal, Mr. Curry replaced the entire newsroom and pilfered contributors from the New York Times and The Washington Post and other publications.

On top of that, he gave Emerge a new striking, eye popping new tagline: “Black America’s Newsmagazine.”

From 1993-2000 under his guidance, the magazine won over 40 national journalism awards, including Curry’s honor for journalist of the year by the Washington Association of Black Journalists in 1995.

At its peak, Emerge had a circulation of more than 160,000, which gave Mr. Curry his most prominent platform as an editor.   

The magazine drew the attention of the nation in Nov. 1993 when it published a bold depiction of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with an Aunt Jemima handkerchief tied on his head serving as a symbol of subservience to Caucasians.

The headline of the piece was “Betrayed,” which argued that Justice Thomas on a consistent basis ruled against minorities and advances in civil rights following his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991.

The magazine ran another about Thomas five years later publishing a defaming caricature of him as a cast-iron lawn jockey holding a lantern, with the headline of “Uncle Thomas: Lawn Jockey of the Far Right.”

Mr. Curry explained in an editor’s note that the lawn jockey was used by plantation owners as an indicator that a slave escaped.

“I apologize,” he said in the note of the magazine’s prior over of Thomas in the aforementioned handkerchief.

“In retrospect, we were far too benevolent. Even our latest depiction is too compassionate for a person who has done so much to turn back the clock on civil rights, all the way back to the pre-Civil War lawn jockey days.”

The one story that was said by many to be the “highlight” of Mr. Curry’s career was his 1996 piece entitled, “Kemba’s Nightmare.”

A 17-page cover story in May of 1996 about a girl who attended historically black Hampton University who was sentenced to 24 years in prison for taking part in a drug-distribution scheme.

She received a pardon of that offense from President Bill Clinton in 2000 after talking with Curry and his piece was credited as the inspiration of the national movement against harsh sentences for drug offenders.

While Emerge gave a voice to the African American community, it also had many detractors.

Back in 1997, the conservative publication the Weekly Standard noted that African American publication’s tended to cover stories that consisted of a conspiracy-minded tinge that involved the CIA and FBI.

Their exact words were, “Emerge has become one of the chief propounders of the idea that the white establishment consciously uses government authority to harass, persecute, and downgrade American blacks.”

While Emerge served as a voice for the black community and did it very well, it struggled to gain commercial viability during its run.

Back in 2000, magazine publisher Keith Clinkscales acquired all of BET magazine holdings and he relaunched Emerge as a lifestyle magazine.

Mr. Curry left and for a brief time served as head of American Society of Magazine Editors. He also tried to create a follow-up publication to emerge.

Before his sudden passing, Mr. Curry was raising money to relaunch emerge as a digital magazine.

“There is a black middle-class audience that’s looking for a news with an edge,” he told Time 16 years ago. “Our people still need a magazine like Emerge.”

As host of TV One’s “News One Now,” friend, colleague and fellow columnist Roland S. Martin said back in August, “George Curry died with his boots on, still fighting.”

Along with his work at Emerge, Curry worked at the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) News Service in Washington, D.C. where his work consisted of hearing oral arguments in the Supreme Court to making visits to Doha, Qatar to write stories about the Iraq war.

In 2001, Mr. Curry became the NNPA’s editor-in-chief of their News Service and of BlackPressUSA.com, where he wrote a weekly column that was published in more than 200 African-American newspapers in the country.

Mr. Curry announced his resignation from the NNPA as the Editor-In-Chief of their Washington, D.C. news service on Mar. 15, 2007. 

In the years that followed Mr. Curry delivered the George E. Ken Lecture, which was a speech given annually. He became the founding director of the St. Louis Minority Journalism Workshop and of the Washington Association of Black Journalists.

Mr. Curry also served on many boards, which included his alma mater Knoxville College, the Kemba Smith Foundation, St. Paul Saturdays and Young D.C.  

The main driving force in Mr. Curry’s formative years that made him the kind of hard hitting stand up for his people kind of journalist that he became was segregation.

He once said to the reference guide of Contemporary Authors, “I used segregation, as cruel as it was, as a positive factor in my life.”

He also said that he refused to drink from “colored” water fountains and that he, “was determined not to let any system or anyone deter me from reaching my goals.”

Mr. Curry had a career and life where he did reach all of his goals and then some. He also during this great rise in this tough nuts and bolts business of sharing this wisdom and knowledge with anyone and everyone, especially young African American journalist like myself.

When I was a senior at Howard University in the School of Communications back in 2005, I took this journalism course where I and several other classmates had to produce stories for a website www.BlackCollegeView.com a part of the NNPA.

I spent a couple of weeks being tutored by Mr. Curry and I have to admit in our first encounter, it was not a smooth moment. I learned from that first encounter that becoming great is not a walk in the park or as glamourous as I first thought.

Through this time though, I did learn that to be great you have to believe in yourself, which I always had, but also being able to listen to a great journalist like him whose made a great name for himself was going to make me a lot better.

I did manage to produce a great story about the first African American head coach in the National Football League (NFL) Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard, who also along with Bobby Marshall were the first two African American players to play in the NFL back in 1920.

One very big key for me in completing this story for www.BlackPressUSA.com entitled " 'Fritz' Pollard Was A Pioneer In Professional Football" was that I was able to get a contact number from Hall of Fame linebacker of the New York football Giants and fellow HBCU graduate of South Carolina State University and Executive Director of the Firtz Pollard Alliance Harry Carson.

That interview that I had with him over the phone was the key in me getting this article completed.

I learned a great deal about Mr. Pollard how he was the first every African American to play running back in the Rose Bowl for Brown University in 1915.

How he led the American Football League (AFL) in 1920 in rushing, receiving scoring and punt returns and led the Akron Indians to an 8-0-3 record and its first title.

After his playing career concluded, Pollard founded the first Black investment firm in New York City; established a black tabloid called "N.Y. Independent News;" managed the Suntan Movie Studio in Harlem, NY and founded coal delivery companies in Chicago, IL, the town of his birth and New York City.  

I had to dig deep to get this story accomplished and I learned from this journey that by bringing a unrelenting focus to the task, something that Mr. Curry did throughout his career, I can be not just a good journalist, but a great one.

From his appearances on television shows like PBS, the “CBS Evening News,” ABC World News Tonight,” NBC’s “The Today Show” and ABC’s 20/20; his legendary work in print journalism and his willingness to share his knowledge with the next generation, it is not accident that Mr. George E. Curry made the list in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who Among Black Americans, and Outstanding Young Men in America.

He had a work ethic that made him a legend. He had a joy of sharing with people how to be great in a business that can slice and dice you when you are not looking. He had a belief that you can be better than the tough surroundings that you might have grown up in like he did. More than anything else, Mr. George E. Curry understood that becoming great was an everyday non-stop pursuit and the ones that had the willingness to take on that challenge were going to achieve all of their dreams no matter what stood in their way.

That is what I and many others before me and after learned and we are all the better for it. Look at me. I have my own blog because of that. Thank you Mr. Curry for letting me know that I can be great and that outworking people is how I will get there as well as knowing my craft both inside and out.

Information and quotations are courtesy of 8/22/16 article from www.washingtonpost.com’s National section, “George E. Curry, Journalist Who Led Black Publication Emerge, Dies at 69;” 8/21/16 post from National Association of Black Journalist website www.nabj.org, “NABJ Mourns the Passing of Longtime Black Press Advocate George E. Curry;” http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E_Curry.