Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gene Roberts made that comment in addressing a Friday night crowd of Wayne County Reads audience in the Moffatt Auditorium at
Wayne
Community College
.
Roberts, a 1950 graduate of Goldsboro High School and former reporter for the Goldsboro News-Argus, is a retired reporter and editor from major U.S. newspapers—the Detroit Free Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times.
Roberts won numerous awards for his coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the war in
Vietnam
.
His book, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, won the Pulitzer Prize for history.
It was co-authored with Atlanta Journal Constitution Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff.
Roberts’s presentation was part of th the fifth annual Wayne County Reads, a countywide “one-book, one-community” reading project.
The selection for this year was Blood Done Sign My Name.
The book is the true story of the murder of an African-American man in author Timothy B. Tyson’s hometown of
Oxford
,
NC
, in 1970 and the African- American uprising that followed.
“In his book, Tyson talks about the struggle for civil rights in the state but also how it affected his father, the Rev. Vernon Tyson—a Methodist minister— and how he dealt with the situation in his church, struggling to help his congregation and to keep his job.
‘TIMES OF TURMOIL’
Roberts called the Civil Rights Movement “interesting times of turmoil.”
He said it was a movement that would never have happened had it not been for the sentiment created by the black press calling for racial equality.
Roberts recalled working for the Raleigh News and Observer during the early days of the movement and said he attended a rally at a
Raleigh
church that had an overflowing, not-even-standing-room crowd to hear a speech by Dr, Martin Luther King Jr.
He said that when he arrived he was shocked at the elderly crowd inside and the student gathering outside.
“It was an unusually hot night and the only way I could cover the speech was to be hoisted up into a window,” Roberts recalled.
“When I saw black women pulling nickels and dimes and quarters out from knotted-up handkerchiefs in their purses I was convinced it was the beginning of a movement that would change America,” the retired newspaperman added.
He also recalled “hairy and scary times” during the coverage of the mob violence and Klan rallies across both
Alabama
and
Mississippi
.
He recalled being kicked in the back by a woman during a Klan rally and also being threatened by a mob.
He said reporters learned to deal with local populations by either dressing like them “to blend in” or dressing up to appear as if they were FBI agents.
He also recalled his early days of a long newspaper career.
Roberts was introduced to the Wayne County Reads audience by Gene Price, retired editor of the Goldsboro News-Argus.
Price hired Roberts in the early 1950’s.
The late Henry Belk was editor of the paper at that time and Roberts recalled that Belk finally lost his patience with him one time.
Belk, who was blind, scolded Roberts and told him to write and make him see it.
“It was the best advice that could ever be given to a reporter,” Roberts said.
He went on to chuckle when he said Belk finally made him describe the most beautiful scene he had witnessed during the day.
“I finally described the scene in the poolroom,” Roberts said.
“I liked to have a beer at the end of the day in the poolroom on
Walnut Street
,” he said.
Roberts described that scene and became known by the poolroom clientele for that piece.
Roberts is the son of the late
Eugene
“Pop” Roberts Sr., who was a longtime journalism and printing teacher at
Goldsboro
High School
.
