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Unfamiliar Streets: The Chattanooga Sit-ins, the Local Press, and the Concern for Civilities

Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in their breakthrough work, The Race Beat, contended that mainstream newspapers—white newspapers—largely ignored the black community until the 1950s and 1960s when editors gradually began opening their pages to reports of racial discrimination and the emerging protest against segregation. This coverage significantly shaped the civil rights movement, Roberts and Klibanoff argued. “Unfamiliar Streets” offers nuance to their narrative. Examining the local coverage of the 1960 Chattanooga sit-in movement as a case study, Jessie Harris contends that reporters and editors, although they should be credited for extensively covering the sit-ins, ultimately cared more for civilities than civil rights. Their coverage detailed the protests, fights, and mobs downtown, but only rarely provided perspectives of student demonstrators and rarely called attention to the injustices of segregation.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-3394
Date06 May 2011
CreatorsHarris, Jessie
PublisherVCU Scholars Compass
Source SetsVirginia Commonwealth University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
Rights© The Author

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