The Race Beat Analysis

The Race Beat, written by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff is the story of how Americans reacted to its race problem, and how a country who expected nothing more than for a united nation after World War II came into the knowing of the inequalities of racial segregation in the South. It is a story of how the press, after years of paying no attention to the problems of the United States, began to realize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turned it into the most relevant story of the twentieth century.
It begins with a detailed story discussing the history of the Negro press in the United States, preceding the lunch counter, bus boycott, and school desegregation activities affiliated with the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, and introduced the small group of white editors who were determined to encourage their paper to take a stand against the segregation that surrounded them for decades. The story covers everything from the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 to the march in Selma, Alabama in the summer of 1965. The Race Beat accounts for how the press covered the civil rights movement and how the movement learned to use the press to its advantage. Most importantly, it gave a better understanding of how the news changed over time.
As a reader, my mind was most affected, not by the struggle of the civil rights movement, but by the determination of the editors to assist in putting an end to segregation in the United States. This changed my mind about some of what I was taught about the civil rights movement and how big of an impact it had on not just African Americans, but everyone as a whole.

Throughout the story, we as the audience witness some of the southern editors joining in on the massive...

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The civil rights movement in the North gets little attention, and the attention that they did get was only in the framework of Martin Luther King Jr.’s many struggles in Chicago. The electoral gains that came later in the 70s and 80s were basically ignored, or not handled with as much care, in the same manner. And of course, the amount in which racism has overcome is an issue that is still currently up for a controversial debate.
Growing up in a time where we have seen the different actions by America’s first black President, Barack Obama, I think it is appropriate to look back on the civil rights movement and the role that hundreds played in documenting the events. Accurately researched and intensely condensed, The Race Beat is an extraordinary explanation of one of the most explosive periods in our nation’s history, as told by those who covered it