A view from a friend...

In the article To be a 'Negro' Newsman- Reporting on The Emmett Till Murder Trial, we get a perspective of someone who was traveling with Till from Chicago, and was there when his murderers took him from the farmhouse they were staying. Simeon Booker's article, which was later published in Jet Magazine, was a testimony to the tough atmosphere of the courtroom and being African American reporting on a case that has such weight to their community and the importance of using media to report the truth so that everyone can know the details of this awful case. 'Said our guests: "The trial won't last two days. The State doesn't even know where this boy was killed. They have no murder weapon. They have hardly circumstantial evidence of a killing." Frustration builds while the white reporters do as much as they can to get the reporters of color out of the room to maintain a 'white' lens on the case, to avoid stirring up the African American population. "There was a vast wall between the races. There were the barriers of mistrust and lack of confidence." This article struck me because it wasn't solely about Emmett Till's murder, it was based on the actual experience of being in the court room as a colored reporter at the time and even with that title, still not being treated equally in society to report for their own community. "Thus, these newsmen became the only whites who actually knew of the
behind-the-scenes activity, and since they were involved they modestly have refrained from disclosing their roles in later stories."By squeezing out colored reporters, it was an attempt to sway the population to view the case with a white lens, keeping false dignity for those involved, when in the end, this brought more hate to the white population for not telling the story truthfully. I felt it was important to have at least one account reporting the life of a reporter of color at this time, because it rings true to the unjust society that the U.S. was in history, and can map why we manipulate the media in the present.

Booker, Simeon. "To Be a 'Negro' Newsman--Reporting on the Emmett Till Murder Trial." Newman Reports. 65.3 (2011): 26-27. Web. 4 Mar. 2014. <http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=44b6cac0-1377-43d6-857a-4c7323d490f3@sessionmgr4005&vid=4&hid=4209>.