Book Nook: Reason vs. Racism - A Newspaper Family, Race, and Justice

 Back in the sweltering summer of August 1937, national reporters swarmed over Alabama, chasing rumors that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Ray Sprigle of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — perhaps history’s only investigative reporter who was also a chicken farmer — took a different approach. He did his homework, and went to see a Klan leader who wanted to set his "no ‘count son” up with a flock of chickens.

 

After chewing tobacco and debating the merits of Leghorns vs. Wyandottes, the Klansman opened his safe and gave Sprigle proof that Black was a life member of the Klan. Sprigle got the story … and a Pulitzer Prize.

 

I had a chance to see a copy of Reason vs. Racism: A Newspaper Family, Race and Justice . The book is an interesting explorationinto one of America’s last remaining newspaper families and its century-plus long struggles with racial issues. The Block family, which currently publishes newspapers in Toledo and Pittsburgh but once had papers in many other cities, asked longtime journalist and author Jack Lessenberry to take a deep and comprehensive look into their company’s record on race — and granted him carte blanche.

 

In an era marked by intense controversy over how media cover race, this groundbreaking book is an important and compelling addition to the debate.    

 

About the Author

Jack Lessenberry has been a writer for many national and regional publications, including Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He is a contributing editor and columnist for the Toledo Blade, and occasionally other newspapers, and is the co-author of the book, The People’s Lawyer, The Life and Times of Frank J. Kelley, the Nation’s Longest-Serving Attorney General, published by Wayne State University Press

 

He lives in Huntington Woods and Charlevoix, Michigan, with his partner in life, Elizabeth Zerwekh, a highly skilled archivist whose research contributed greatly to Reason vs. Racism. The couple shares their homes with dogs Ashley and Chet, and entirely too many and not nearly enough books.

 

For more information, please visit https://lessenberryink.com/, or follow him on Facebook and Twitter at @JackLessenberry.