Better late than never, the saying goes.
So it is in North Carolina:
In a special section in today's Observer and some other newspapers in the state, Duke University historian Timothy Tyson tells of the bloody coup d'etat in 1898 by which white supremacists seized power in Wilmington. That city at the time was the state's largest, with a black majority, a black-owned daily newspaper and several black officials, including four of the 10 aldermen. He tells how many of the black political leaders and their white allies were killed, banished or forced from public life and many prosperous black businessmen were ruined if not run out of town. On today's Viewpoint page, Associate Editor Jack Betts examines the Observer's role in the campaign to restore white rule.Taken together, the two accounts offer a sobering illustration of what can happen when men who appear to be the best and brightest of their day pursue a course that is selfishly, tragically, murderously wrong.
And so, 108 years after that bloody coup d'etat, the Charlotte Observer apologized for its role.
An apology is inadequate to atone for the Observer's role in promoting the white supremacist campaign. But an apology is due. As Mr. Faulkner observed, the past is not dead. For much of the 20th century black citizens were denied political rights, adequate education and economic opportunity because of their race. The legacy of that era helped shape North Carolina for decades. Only in recent years has our state begun to reap the benefits of talented blacks' full participation in its economic, cultural and political life.
We apologize to the black citizens and their descendants whose rights and interests we disregarded, and to all North Carolinians, whose trust we betrayed by our failure to fairly report the news and to stand firmly against injustice.
It is hard today to imagine just how vile and detestable segregation was and how thoroughly ingrained it was in Southern society. It was even more vile in the period following Reconstruction when Southern whites reasserted authority -- often violently -- over those offices and institutions that had been turned over to freed slaves.
Conservative white Democrats had regained political control of the state after the federal government lost interest in Reconstruction following the 1876 election. But in the 1890s, economic hard times aroused discontent with a government run by a self-serving elite that did not meet the people's needs. A new coalition formed, made up of old-line Republicans, rural whites ground down by hard times, and blacks seeking political rights. The so-called Fusion movement won every statewide office in the 1894 and 1896 elections, gained control of the legislature and elected one of its white leaders, Daniel Russell, as governor.
The conservative business elite, including many in Charlotte, was alarmed by Fusion politicians' commitment to making government more democratic. Though blacks made up only a third of the state's population, business leaders felt threatened by a political system in which blacks and poor whites held the balance of power at the polls. So they adopted an age-old strategy: divide and conquer. To drive a wedge between blacks and white farmers, they conducted a statewide propaganda campaign portraying blacks as sexual predators and corrupt incompetents and fomenting fear of black domination.
In 1897 a Fusion leader serving in the U.S. Senate said the only way moneyed interests could recapture the state legislature would be for the Raleigh and Charlotte newspapers to get "together in the same bed shouting `nigger.' "
The Charlotte Daily Observer and the News & Observer did so -- with a vengeance.
The attitude of the paper's publisher at the time is shocking today. Back then it was par for the course.
Mr. Tompkins shared the racial assumptions of his time, reflecting a form of Social Darwinism that lumped all blacks, regardless of their accomplish- ments, into one category of social and intellectual inferiority. He believed in rule by Anglo-Saxon men.
Under Editor J.P. Caldwell, the Observer covered black institutions, ran stories about notable black residents and published letters and columns by black correspondents. But an editorial defined the Observer's view of the proper relationship between the races: "Well-bred, intelligent and right-minded white people do not dislike black people because they are black, but they are opposed to their bearing authority because it is not well for either race that they should. Indeed, no greater unkindness can be done the colored race than to put members of it in authority over the white. It angers the white man, excites race antagonism and spoils the negro."
So, why apologize now, after 108 years have passed and all those who were wronged and all those who committed the wrongs have long since gone to the grave? Especially since the Observer's current owners have no relation to the 1898 owners.
Ed Williams, editorial page editor of the Charlotte paper, said he ordinarily is against "people who didn't commit a wrong apologizing to those who were wronged and are long dead." But he said this case was special given that the racist actions impact today's residents. "I thought we just needed to get on the right side of history on that," he told E&P.
Orage Quarles, the News & Observer's publisher, agreed that apologizing for the acts of past owners may seem hollow. But he stressed that "it is part of our history and there are numerous employees here who had no idea of our role. It as like a giant shadow hanging over it, and we are done with it."
The apology also comes several months after a report was issued by a special 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission.
The Observer is not alone in recognizing the need to apologize. The Tallahassee Democrat in May apologized for its coverage of a bus boycott 50 years ago.
It is inconceivable that a newspaper, an institution that exists freely only because of the Bill of Rights, could be so wrong on civil rights. But we were.
While the Democrat today is a far different organization from what it was 50 years ago, we have never formally apologized for our actions. Nothing will change history, certainly not a few words. But words are a powerful tool and can have a lasting and healing impact.
Recently, the Democrat apologized privately to Henry and Derek Steele for how this institution treated their father and other civil-rights leaders. We told them we intended to apologize publicly, not only for how we treated the Rev. Steele and others as individuals, but also for how we behaved throughout that era. We now do apologize.
And in 2004 -- as the nation was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky issued this jaw-dropping apology:
"It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement," the clarification read. "We regret the omission."
Actually, the paper didn't completely ignore news in the black community.
The Herald and the Leader shelved most news about blacks in a column called "Colored Notes."
It was compiled by the newsroom's only black employee, Gertrude Morbley, until 1969.
If you have lived in the South long enough, you know that sort of newspaper coverage quite well. In Mississippi in the early 1980s there was still a small weekly paper that had a regular feature called "Among Our Colored Friends."
Many newspapers not only segregated news from the black community, they actively worked to thwart the civil rights movement.
Three apologies is a good start, but there are many more that can and should be made.