George Curry had been a quarterback because the days of his Alabama childhood. He might collect a group of friends to transfer within the backfield and on the road to make issues occur. Sometimes they might win.
By the time Curry turned a senior at tiny Knoxville College in east Tennessee, he had melded his curiosity in learning historical past together with his curiosity in sports activities and journalism. He was quarterback for the Knoxville soccer workforce and editor of The Aurora, the campus newspaper.
With commencement at hand, within the spring of 1970, actuality was setting in. A professional career as quarterback was not within the playing cards, he discovered. A career as a sports activities journalist was. Curry can be recruited by Sports Illustrated, turning into the second sportswriter of colour to be employed by the journal. As he started compiling his report in newsrooms, Curry would use the identical quarterbacking expertise he had discovered and make use of them as a journalist.
In the many years forward, Curry turned an impressive reporter and ultimately a profitable and influential newsroom quarterback. Over the years, he turned generally known as a revered and demanding coach, mentor and a participant who took dangers to win when seemingly insurmountable challenges confronted him.
The newsroom quarterback had taken a break from the push of the sport final weekend to get a chew to eat. Within hours, he had died of a coronary heart assault at a Washington, D.C., hospital. Curry was 69.
“He [Curry] started early giving back,” stated journalist Dwight Lewis, a reporter and columnist for The (Nashville) Tennessean for 40 years till his retirement in 2011. Lewis was a longtime colleague of Curry’s.
Lewis stated he and Curry met whereas each have been in school and toying with journalism. Lewis performed baseball at Tennessee A & I State College, now Tennessee State University, and wrote for The Meter, the campus paper. Curry, the Knoxville quarterback, was editor of the school’s paper. They met at a summer time journalism camp in Atlanta held by Clark College, Lewis stated. Both turned newspaper reporters after school, Lewis recalled. As life goes, they might run throughout each other at numerous journalism gatherings, Lewis stated.
“George kept going until the end,” stated Lewis, reflecting on Curry’s work and achievements. “He [George] was like Alex Haley,” he stated, referring to the writer of the bestselling ebook Roots. He came to know Haley after his ebook drew the writer worldwide acclaim. “Both had a hard time saying no to people.”
Lewis stated he remembers the day after Haley died. Lamar Alexander, a pal of Haley’s, stated, “We used him up. I thought about the same thing with George Curry,” stated Lewis. “I guess he was just one of those people who had a hard time saying no to people. He wanted to give everything he had.”
Curry might get additionally get actual critical, resembling when he was articulating the necessity for journalists to pursue justice for the underserved.
He might additionally take a break from what he clearly noticed because the troubles of the world. Occasionally, he was in for a critical card recreation of Dirty Hearts, by which he was the standard winner. He would pay attention for hours to the late legendary singer James Brown. In his factor, Curry would imitate civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, and sound extra like Jackson than himself.
Curry’s sudden exit from life’s stage might have been among the many most undesirable flip of occasions for those who knew him and labored to advance variety within the information media. What has made Curry’s passing even harder is that his demise comes once we are dropping those who promoted affirmative motion in employment, variety and protection. These roles usually are not being crammed quick sufficient with successors of equal braveness and willpower.
Think for a minute concerning the heavy toll in recent times: Philadelphia Inquirer reporter and editor Acel Moore; Dori Maynard, president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education; John Seigenthaler, founding father of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center; Minnie Two Shoes, a co-founding father of the Native American Journalists Association; Washington Post columnist William Raspberry; broadcaster Sidmel Estes, the primary feminine president of the National Association of Black Journalists; rising reporter Michael Feeney; and Los Angeles Times columnist Frank Del Olmo. They preceded champions of change reminiscent of Al Neuharth, founding father of the Freedom Forum, Jim Batten, chairman of Knight-Ridder, and their progressive friends.
Curry’s passing reminds us that champions like him won’t be with us ceaselessly. It reminds us that we’d like to refresh ourselves so as to keep it up the work of the second era of media variety troopers, lest there be no third era about whom to cheer.
The pioneers began in an period when it was robust for blacks to get jobs within the common media and robust for progressive whites to get most of their friends to open the doorways to allow us to in.
Like Curry, the second era now reaching its homestretch is steadily making its exit as we wrestle to maintain onto the positive factors marshaled by our predecessors.
Curry courageously and proudly carried the baton on behalf of us all — individuals of all colours who wanted to obtain unity of shared respect, shared energy and shared achievement.
Curry’s photograph albums chronicle highlights of his conferences and appearances with individuals of affect and from the grassroots together with Pope John Paul II; civil rights activists Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King; South African president Nelson Mandela; Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, former President Bill Clinton and spouse Hillary Clinton; civil rights leaders Julian Bond, Andrew Young, John Lewis; poet Maya Angelou; and Kemba Smith. It’s the sort of historical past most any journalist would need to earn.
The listing goes on as do the piles of stories tales and columns Curry penned. He reported all of the cops and robbers tales, as any rookie would. As he acquired his footing and grasped the potential of media to impact change, he moved on to points about controversial public and personal insurance policies and practices that undermined the power of black Americans, different minorities and the poor to be revered and handled as equals.
A take a look at Curry’s career confirmed he was among the many era of people that did their greatest to make good on following paths carved by the pioneering era of black journalists who had preceded him. That was when occasions have been actually tough.
After graduating in 1970 from Knoxville College, the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, public highschool graduate was one of many first blacks employed as a full-time reporter for Sports Illustrated. In 1977, he left Sports Illustrated for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the place he was a reporter till 1983.
During that point he authored his first e-book, America’s Most Famous Black Coach, a biography of legendary school soccer coach Jake Gaither. He additionally began the St. Louis Minority Journalism Workshop in 1977, one among a number of such packages he would launch or work with across the nation.
In 1983, Curry left for the Chicago Tribune, the place he labored for a decade as a Washington correspondent, and New York bureau chief. Those assignments had him touring around the globe, together with overlaying the 1988 presidential contests by which Jackson, then based mostly on Chicago, made a critical bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
From the Tribune, Curry leaped into the journal world as editor-in-chief of Emerge, a comparatively new nationwide month-to-month based by Wilmer Ames, the Time journal editor who based Emerge as a critical various to Ebony journal. Curry had freelanced for Ames and the 2 developed a very good working relationship, making Curry a simple selection when Ames stepped down.
“He was a good editor, a different kind of editor,” stated veteran Washington editor Flo Purnell, the primary individual Curry employed to work with him on Emerge. Purnell had been a replica editor for USA Today. Curry wanted her to be managing editor of a nationwide journal with a circulation of greater than 100,000.
“George could pull in the broad view,” Purnell recalled. “I knew how to think and plan ahead.”
Curry and Purnell crafted problems with the journal that grabbed consideration month after month. They included cowl footage mocking President Ronald Reagan’s selection of lawyer Clarence Thomas for the U.S. Supreme Court, ostensibly changing the late Justice Thurgood Marshall. The tales have been accompanied by biting reporting on Thomas.
Emerge would lead protection on “cyber hate,” working with the Southern Poverty Law Center to produce one of many first nationwide tales about hate on-line. The journal continued work on civil rights murders within the South and did detailed reporting of supporters of the Federalists Society, the conservative political motion group.
Winning widespread acclaim for their brave work, Curry and his small workforce of editors, reality checkers, freelance writers and photographers typically labored late nights and many weekends to produce the journal.
One of its excessive factors was publication in May 1996 of “Kemba’s Nightmare,” a 10,000-word opus penned by me. “Kemba’s Nightmare” was about school freshman Kemba Smith, who turned concerned with a drug vendor solely to be indicted and convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 24½ years in federal jail with no probability of parole, regardless of being a primary-time, nonviolent offender.
The Emerge story, one of many longest function items in a daily journal since Harper’s revealed “The Prisoner of Sex” in 1970, was certainly a bet for Curry. It was far longer than the two,000-word story initially assigned. It was a few no one, opposite to what individuals thought bought magazines. A direct assault on the federal authorities’s obligatory-minimal sentencing law, it was as scorching a potato as placing Thomas on the duvet once more.
Didn’t matter. It was a danger Curry felt was value taking as a result of it made sense to problem a law that was inflicting longtime jail time for hundreds of younger individuals. He should have thought to heck with our jobs, our standing within the enterprise, or invites to Washington events. We have been journalists championing a trigger for those with no voice within the halls of presidency.
“Kemba’s Nightmare” was probably extra controversial than any cartoon about Thomas. Curry, the quarterback, was set to throw lengthy. The toss was a winner.
The story spurred a motion within the black church, amongst Greek-letter organizations, educators and lawmakers. It captured the eye of the bigger legal group. Even newspapers and magazines, a few of which had discarded letters from Smith earlier than she hit the duvet of Emerge, and had revealed editorials supporting drug sentencing legal guidelines, started to give attention to obligatory-minimal sentences as greater than a narrative concerning the struggle on medicine.
By the time Curry used Smith’s story to declare that the law was a warfare on blacks, momentum on the White House was shifting to grant aid to first-time, nonviolent offenders.
Smith’s 24½ yr obligatory sentence with out parole was commuted by President Clinton in December 2000, to time served — 6½ years. This yr, President Barack Obama has continued Clinton’s transfer. A bipartisan Congress is prepared to roll back the law, acknowledging its racial overtones, disruption of households and excessive prices to taxpayers. This might have been achieved 20 years in the past, had people been studying Emerge.
“He took a gamble on me, having me as the poster child on an issue,” Smith stated after listening to of Curry’s demise. “He wanted to highlight an issue. It wasn’t just about me.”
Smith, who is now a member of the state corrections board in Virginia, credit Curry’s choice to publish the story for making a motion about jail sentencing that continues as we speak. “His decision changed my life. It has helped me define my purpose.”
Curry was as stunned because the journal’s readers when proprietor Robert Johnson, founding father of BET Television, determined in 2003 to promote it to two entrepreneurs who wanted to take the journal in an Ebony path.
Within months Curry, his small crew and his journalism have been gone. A couple of years later the journal, having gained some 40 nationwide journal awards beneath his management, was gone, too.
Curry was in a position to proceed spreading arduous information to black America as editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service. That place ensured weekly publication in almost 200 papers throughout the nation of his syndicated column. It targeted on problems with significance to most of the people, particularly points that negatively affected individuals of colour. He helped give context and which means to the Black Lives Matter motion. He drew on his life experiences and research of American historical past to go residence to Alabama to report from Selma on the 50th anniversary of the historic bloody confrontation with police on the Edmund Pettus bridge.
Curry had one other delicate coronary heart assault on that journey, shook it off, famous the hazard and stored shifting. His readers wanted to learn of his insights. His mentees, now within the a whole lot, wanted to name him for career recommendation. Someone who knew of him wanted him to come converse at a conference for free. Of course he stated he would, hoping that gesture might pay for itself at another occasion.
Curry additionally wanted to proceed engaged on an enormous dream that had been derailed greater than a decade earlier. He wanted to reviveEmerge as an online news operation. We talked about all of it yr, with the May 2016 concern marking the 20th anniversary of the publication of “Kemba’s Nightmare.”
We would write about how a lot Smith had reclaimed her life and devoted herself to counseling others concerning the risks of irresponsible decisions. The story was to embrace information that her son, born within the early days of her custody, was about to graduate from school this spring. We swapped concepts about Smith once more and contemplated what else might we discover to reconnect with America as we did within the Emerge years.
It was a shocking notice, to put it mildly, that the Smith concept can be shelved. George Curry, the black “Mouth of The South,” the colleague who might transfer as decisively as Isaac Hayes within the closing minutes of his Hot Buttered Soul, wouldn’t be right here to quarterback for us.
Services for George Curry can be held Saturday in his hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Those anticipated to attend embrace civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network.
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