Celebrating and Remembering the History of Black America with Deborah Douglas ’89

HELEN KIM: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections, where we talk to alumni about how key experiences have propelled them in their life's work. I'm Helen Kim from the Northwestern Alumni Association. And on today's episode, we'll hear from Deborah Douglas, the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and senior leader with the OpEd Project.

She's also an award winning journalist and the author of US Civil Rights Trail A Traveler's Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement, a book that covers a vivid glimpse into the story of black America's fight for freedom and equality. For her new book, she traveled to cities including Atlanta, Memphis, Selma, Charleston, and more, to interview civil rights leaders and local business owners. Let's listen to Deborah's story, starting with her time at Northwestern in 1985.

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: The short story is, I am Northwestern Medill '89, and I am a journalist, and I am a journalism professor, and I live in Chicago, downtown.

HELEN KIM: What is one of the most memorable memories that you've had at Northwestern during your undergraduate years?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: I would say, getting the keys to the Evanston Review when I was a freshman. I was a work-study student at the public library where I put in those metal security tapes, so that was not a sexy job. So I crashed a graduate school reception. It was a recruiting reception downtown. And even though undergraduates were not invited, I invited myself, a freshman, to the graduate school recruiting session.

And I went around [INAUDIBLE] and introduced myself to people. And I met the human resources director for the Pioneer Press. They were the chain of weekly papers in the Chicago suburbs.

He liked me. He said he was impressed by me, and he said, I'll see if I can find something for you. And so he was weighing two jobs. The one job he gave to a recent graduate from the University of Michigan. Then he hired me for the other job, which was an editorial assistant at the Evanston Review. So I had the keys to the building as a freshman in college.

HELEN KIM: That is a bold move that you made. Look where it got you.

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: You know, I come from humble circumstances. I'm a child of the Great Migration. I was born in Chicago on the West side. My father came up from Mississippi, and he ran a business, a body shop, that employed many of his relatives fixing cars.

And my parents split early. My mom moved to Detroit. She worked for the federal government.

And I just knew what it was like to work and strive, to take a chance on a business, or I watched my mother take classes so that our lives could become better, so she could learn new skills and climb up the ladder at work. And so Northwestern was my shot. I came there for the journalism school, and I was determined to take advantage of every last bit of it.

HELEN KIM: If crashing a graduate school's reception when you're a freshman was one of the first moves that you made for your career path, I can't wait to hear what you did after graduation. So tell us how your career path spanned out after graduating from Northwestern.

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: Yeah, well I've worked all over the country. The Monday after graduation, I started working as a reporter at the Kansas City Star. I was in a year-long internship program for minority journalists. So me, [? Adi ?] [? Grant, ?] and Diane [? Sail ?] from Hawaii, were all in this program with other people.

We would move to a different paper every four months. So I started out in Kansas City because I came out with some pretty strong skills. Then I worked in the Detroit suburbs, and I eventually landed at a newspaper chain right outside of New Haven, Connecticut.

I ended up interning in Memphis. And my editors there liked me, but there was a hiring freeze in Scripps Howard. That was the corporation that owned it.

My editor talked to his girlfriend who was the city editor at the paper of record in Jackson, Mississippi, and I was hired at the Clarion-Ledger, a Gannett newspaper. So I was there for about three years. I was tired of not making any money though.

So I came back north, which was the context that led me into journalism in the first place, and more money. And I worked in professional and trade publishing, which gave me an opportunity to assume more responsibility over the publishing process. And, I guess, every time I decided I wanted to grow, it wasn't something that was bestowed upon me in the institutions that I worked at. I just decided to promote myself.

HELEN KIM: Wow. So it really sounds like you traveled to many, many different places all over the country. You also mentioned that you moved every four months. How were you able to adapt to each place, meeting new people every time, getting used to the work there, getting used to the neighborhood? So did you like that lifestyle, or was is really difficult for you?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: [INAUDIBLE] for me, because I was static for four years at Northwestern. I mean, I took advantage of all the opportunities in the Chicago area, but it wasn't like I was moving around for that four year span. Also, I grew up all over the place.

So like I said, my dad ran a business in Chicago. My mom was in Detroit. And every three or four weeks or so when I was really small, we would just get on the Greyhound bus or the train and come over and visit my dad, because they were trying to figure out what they were doing.

And so I was used to going some place at the drop of a hat. And then my mother eventually remarried when I was, I think, 6 or 7. And, actually, he was a mean man. And very smart and intense work ethic, but he was a mean man who actually eventually got a terminal illness, tuberculosis, which exacerbated his basic personality.

So my mother sent me to live with her mother in a small town outside of Memphis, called Covington. It had the town square. It's got your confederate monument. You know, all the accoutrements of the South.

And so I moved around a lot with that because my mom sent me there, but she didn't send me there permanently. She's like, go down, let's see how it goes. But you're my child, and I'll call you back anytime.

So for every major break, like at Christmas, or I would go back to Detroit at Easter time, I would literally pack everything that I owned because I didn't know if I was coming back. I was used to moving around. And also because my mother was a victim of domestic violence for a period.

And so, sometimes we would get up in the middle of the night and run away. So then I would be implicated in a new school system, just like that. Or once I was left behind after my mom and her two new little kids went back to him because it was my third school that year, and so, she didn't want to disrupt me any further. So she left me at this family's house.

It was a nice, beautiful house in the suburbs. It wasn't my mom's house though, so it's just not the same. But I was used to just moving around.

But I also noticed, like, the holes in that story also. Like, how you have to speak up for yourself when you're in a context that's not comfortable.

HELEN KIM: Let's talk a little bit more about what you just said about speaking up when you're not comfortable. Were there any times where you had to do that-- in workplaces, in life, or in any other situation? Which--

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: It's so--

HELEN KIM: --is easier said than done.

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: When I was working in Jackson, Mississippi once, I was sent to interview a young woman whose child was in the foster system. And something that happened, and I don't remember all the details, but my editor sent me out to figure out what the details were because it was newsworthy. And so, I came back and told him that I stood outside her door, and I said everything I could possibly say to get this young woman to open up and talk to me, to let her know that we had her best interests at heart.

And she was like a teenager. I want to say she was, like, 17. She wasn't an adult. But she said that she couldn't talk to me because her boyfriend did not give her permission.

So, yes. I went back to the office and I told my editor that she said that her boyfriend won't let her talk to me-- her boyfriend? I'm like, what woman listens to a man these days to get permission to talk, especially a boyfriend. He was like, Deb, there are people who actually believe that. And he was right. As much as I like to, at any given moment think that we have progressed so far, he was right about that.

Then one other time I was at the Sun-Times. This is like in the 2000s. I went to my editor's office-- I was number two in the features department. I relaunched lifestyles coverage for the Chicago Sun-Times.

And I went to the features editor's office, and I sat down and I said, I've relaunched lifestyles for you, and it's a really easy job and I just think I'm capable of doing more and taking on more responsibility. So what do you have for me? He was like, well why don't you just chill out. He was like, you're done with work at 11:00. Just chill.

And I'm like, no, John. I'm like, when I come to the Chicago Sun-Times every day, it's just not Deborah Douglas coming to the Chicago Sun-Times. I have a whole community that comes with me. You can't see them, but they're hear with me.

They expect me to be a responsible caregiver of their stories. So the black community is counting on me to show up and be a part of this experience in the most responsible way. And so he goes, oh man, why does it have to be a black thing-- black, black, black.

I'm like, John, this is not that black conversation. This is the other black conversation. This is the talented tenth black conversation. I'm here as a representative of the talented tenth, and I'm telling you that when we go to work, we have expectations to meet that have nothing to do with what you want me to do, but with what my community expects of me because they're responsible for me being here. So that was the time I needed to speak up.

HELEN KIM: And how did he react?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: We talked about a lot of things that day. It was a earth shattering day for many reasons that I won't go into on this interview, but eventually, I did get more responsibility. I was still the deputy features editor, but they also made me library director.

So I was a caretaker of the newspaper's intellectual assets, which gave me an opportunity to do some things like help curate books. Like, Rich [INAUDIBLE] put together a book on the White Sox World Series, and I was in charge of decision making and access on that. I got to green-light the cover of the book that Chris Benson wrote. He's a professor at Medill right now. His book with Mamie Till-Mobley about the aftermath of the murder of Emmett Till-- I got to green-light that photograph because that was one of our assets.

I got to bring my photo exhibits to the Museum of Science and Industry. There's lots of really fun things that you wouldn't think makes sense for a journalist, but it made sense to me. And I also got to be a part of everything that was new at the Sun-Times. In that almost 10 year period that I was there, I was part of it.

So I was the launch editor of the [INAUDIBLE] edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, and so many other things I can't even name them.

HELEN KIM: You don't wear many hats. You wore all the hats, basically.

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: I won't say I wore all the hats, but I do wear many hats. And the thing is, that I'm really curious-- I'm like, a geek about the publishing process. It's just not enough for me to stay in my lane as a writer or to stay in my lane as an editor. I am really curious about the entire process, from the idea all the way until the publication comes off the press. And I'm taking classes in that just to learn that stuff. So just being a black woman working in the news media, I always have tried to bolster myself with as much knowledge as possible so that I can really be the agent of my own salvation. So the Sun-Times is a union shop. You had people who may drag on getting things done because of union concerns. Or you just have people who may not respect who you are and how you are and why you are. And the thing is that I can do all of your jobs, so whatever.

HELEN KIM: From all the stories that you covered, is there one story that really meant a lot to you and meant a lot to the black community?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: There are two stories. One that just ran this past weekend, but one that ran when I was back earlier in my career in Jackson, Mississippi. I had to kill what I ate in Jackson, meaning that I covered a geographic area, and I was the reporter responsible for any news that was coming from that area. So I couldn't depend on some other reporter who may be roaming around my area to come up with the news.

And I had a dedicated section of the paper. And you couldn't print a blank every day, so that meant that I needed to always be in a process of ideation and knowing what was coming next, what's breaking news, what's follow up, and what are just really interesting, enterprise stories, or feature stories-- always have to be a step ahead.

And so on days when I didn't have meetings, I would go hunting for things. I would go to local restaurants where public officials would eat. If there was a quorum at the table, I would sit down and eat with them because they could conduct city or county business. So I got used to being really impertinent, and sitting down and eating with them. And they knew what that was all about.

And I always tried to meet somebody new every week, or develop a deeper relationship with someone that I met one or 2 times. So I went around town, and I heard about this elderly woman who was in the hospital. And her lawyer was advocating to give her some assistance because her house didn't have any heat or air. And something was wrong with the wiring, and she was about to be discharged from the local hospital.

And that was really hot in Mississippi. And if she went home and she slept overnight in that house and in the condition that it was in, especially in her weakened condition, she could die. She would die. I kept hearing this over and over and over again.

And so I talked to her attorney advocate. I talked to city officials. I talked to the people in the community who knew her. And I wrote this article the day before she was to be discharged. And it came out that next morning.

So I'm just doing my job, whatever whatever. So I get up. I'm living in Jackson and my coverage area is the county that's above Jackson. So I drive up to Madison County. I drive to that block because I'm going to do some canvassing that day to talk to more neighbors about just this woman's situation, her personality, just to try to figure out a point of entry for a follow up story.

I can't get down the street because it's blocked off because there are people in the middle of the street with construction materials. There are bus loads of people. There were church groups and other volunteers from the entire state that flocked to the block to come and fix this woman's house, so that when she got out of the hospital later that day or the next day, she would live. She could sleep and live. So to me, that was an example of impact that I will never forget.

And then the story that I wrote over the King Day weekend, it's something that was important to come out with the debut of my new travel book, US Civil Rights Trail. I got the backstory to how the New York Stock Exchange decided to close the markets for King Day. Because for several years, the markets weren't closed on the King federal holiday, which took a long time to come into fruition. And it did under Reagan. When the markets closed, many of us noticed that people started taking King Day seriously. It's funny, when you deprioritize the making of money, when you deprioritize profit, then you can make room for other priorities.

So last year I interviewed the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Dick Grasso. I talked to Reverend Jesse Jackson and his son, who is the one who asked the precipitating question that got the ball rolling. He and his dad were at the Stock Exchange talking to Mr. Grasso, and Jonathan Jackson, the Reverend's second son, said Dad, ask them why they don't close the markets. And then the Reverend turned to Dick and asked him.

And Dick said, well, I don't know. We're a private member organization. Let me ask the board. And to Jonathan's recollection, he remembered that decision being made really quickly.

But if you go into the record, like, if you look at the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, they show that in 1997 they made that decision. And so in 1998, they decided to close the markets for the first time. And it's something special about when the world stands still from its profit-making pose, how things become clear and sacred and serious.

HELEN KIM: And it's just so remarkable that you were able to write a story about this. And I really, really want to get into talking about your book, US Civil Rights Traveler's Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement. Like, what a title, and the content in it is even more phenomenal.

So this book talks about hundreds and hundreds of years of the fight that the black community had to face and go through for freedom and equality. So tell us about this book, and what made you want to write this book. And I also know that you traveled while writing this book to really be part of that community of all the places you've wrote about. So tell us about this book.

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: I spent a year on the road in between teaching and writing because I also happened to be running a news website at the time. I actually travelled official civil rights trail. The trail was made official by Southern travel bureaus in 2018.

The idea of this official trail is rather new, so this is the first book to go to the official trail in the South. My friend and fellow Medillian, Margaret Littman, has written several travel books-- Memphis and Natchez Trace, Nashville-- with Moon Travel Guides. And so she put my name in as someone potentially who would be qualified to write a book like this. And I think I'm qualified, given my great migration bona fides and the kind of work that I do.

And so I vied for the opportunity, and they gave it to me, and I hit the road. Every week for a year I was someplace-- Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, DC, Charleston, you name it. I went to all of the cultural institutions that tell the civil rights story, or sometimes it's a bigger story, like African-American history. But also, I went to places like the ruins of Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, where Carolyn Bryant must have formulated the lie that she told on Emmett Till. I call her Karen, the original Karen.

Another thing I did, because this is a heavy history, if you just dive in and just take stock of all the danger and violence that the people in the mid century civil rights movement faced, it can be a lot to take. So this book helps you curate an entire cultural experience. So I also tell you where to eat, where to shop, where to sleep, and other things like that, where to go hang out.

I prioritize black-owned businesses. Everybody's talking about that now in the wake of the pandemic, but I was on the black-owned tip well before that. Unless otherwise noted, it's a black-owned business.

I really worked hard to identify people, because I wanted to make sure people got an opportunity. Because it was brought to my attention during the course of my research that a lot of journalists and writers and researchers helicopter in to communities, and they see what they see, and they get the stories they want, and take what they take, and then they leave. And they don't deposit anything back into the community. And I wanted to give more than I took. And so this is just one small way that I could do that.

HELEN KIM: That's so inspiring. What were some of the emotions that you were going through as you were traveling to write this book for about a year?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: I would do a double take. Like, when I went to Montgomery, I stayed in a hotel that used to be some site for the Confederacy. There was a marker outside, and I'm like, I'm sleeping here in all my freedom on this hallowed ground for the Confederacy.

Or, I stayed in a hotel, the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, knowing full well that when the Tutwiler was first conceived, the person like me would not be welcome there. That probably I would have been cleaning, if anything, and I would not be somebody who would be regarded or seen or respected. So I had like little moments like that.

And then I created these massive spreadsheets, Excel files, before I hit the road. So I had a lot of information. I reached out to people before I got on the airplane so people were expecting me, to make sure I made the most use of my time.

So a lot of my reflection time came when I was either back on the plane or back in my office, and I'm writing. And then it all comes rushing through, or you start matching up the timeline of which you just saw or experienced, or the space that you were standing in. And then you're like, oh my God, I can't believe they did that.

And it left me actually feeling quite like a slacker when you think about everything people went through. These people got married, had families, property when they could. And then they were part of a movement where they risked their lives. And like, when I get up every day, I don't have to risk my life. I'm not taking near the risk that these people did.

And then, so many of them were so educated. They built the institutions that I engage with today. And it makes me think, I should have a doctorate or something. Like, because they went to school and got it done. Like, Deb, what are you doing? I'm just so proud of those people, and I respect my ancestors so much for what they did for me.

HELEN KIM: I love that. I hope I can affirm you by saying you are the opposite of a slacker from what I've heard and what you have told us so far the past 30 minutes. All the things that you've done and you accomplished and you went through, I do want to switch gears a little bit and talk about, of all the things that you've done, what is one thing that you feel most proud of?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: I am most proud of my identity as a journalist. I decided I wanted to be a storyteller, to be a journalist, when I was eight years old. And when I was 10 years old, I looked in the encyclopedia, and I read about Columbia University and their awesome journalism school.

So I formulated this vision in my mind that I would go to Columbia. It's a grad program, but I was going to go there anyway and just be around the school, and then work my way to the grad school. And then when I got to high school, my mom realized how serious I was. And she didn't like the idea of me going to anybody's college in New York City, so she started asking local professors in Detroit, what's a great journalism school for my daughter to consider? She gave me a list.

She really wanted me to go into a HBCU. She had this woman come to the house one night to brainwash me with a lot of books-- the yearbooks and collateral materials, and stories about how awesome it was going to be. I'm like, no, if I go to any one, it would be Howard because they have a good journalism program. Otherwise, we found Medill.

And my mother said, I think I heard it's the best journalism school. I'm like, you think, or is it? And she's like, it's the best. I'm like, OK, I'll go to the best.

Because I'm a dumb kid, I don't know that you just can't just snap your finger and just go wherever you want to go. But I got into their system. I was a freshman when I got on the mailing list. And I learned all I could about it, and so I built myself some opportunities to come to Northwestern and see what it was about.

And even my recruiter at Northwestern suggested that I apply to Mizzou, the other really great journalism school. I considered it for about 5 seconds, but Columbia, Missouri is in the middle nowhere. I do have a certificate from there. I went there later in life to learn some things.

But I grew up in a rural condition before, and I knew what that could be like. And as great a school as that is, that's just not the context that I wanted to be in. So I went to Medill.

And my industry has been disrupted from day one. It's never been safe to be in this industry, which is why I'm a serial master of all the things that have to do with producing. I can design websites. I can design pages. I'm a writer. I'm an editor. I can do a lot of things-- not everything, but a lot of things.

And so I feel like I'm having a moment right now, where it's starting to make some sense. And I'm glad that I didn't give up and just give in to some sort of humdrum existence where maybe I'm pushing words around a page every day, but I'm not in control, and really amplifying what I consider to be really important issues.

HELEN KIM: And I think your experience really exemplifies the phrase "hard work pays off." You've done so much from the beginning of your freshman year, and even asked your bosses for more work, more responsibilities, and you've wanted that. You wanted to educate yourself and learn new things and new responsibilities. And like, this really put you at a really great spot.

Many years have passed. And I think life is funny in a way, where especially during college, when you're going to a really distinguished school like Northwestern, you are under a lot of pressure, under a lot of stress. But maybe a few years later, you're like, oh, that was really nothing. I made it here. But let's say you could go back in time and meet your younger self in college. What would you tell her after knowing all the things that you've gone through the past years?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: I would tell myself to have more fun. I didn't have a concept of college that didn't involve going to class and then working jobs so that I could test what I was learning in the classroom and get better at my craft. I think I could have still have done that, but I could have left room for a little bit more fun.

I worked, so I had money to buy a cheap ticket to the islands for spring break. But did I do that? No. What was wrong with me?

Yeah. I've been around the world. I've taught in Pakistan. I've taught in South Africa twice. I did a fellowship in Tanzania, then to Tunisia, Senegal, a European tour. I've done some traveling, but because I grew up lower middle class, we worked hard for everything that we got, I thought some things were harder to do than other things.

And I could just have relaxed a little bit more and had a little bit more fun. And that's another pathway to success too, because when you're with other people, like-minded people, and you're actually enjoying each other and having fun, you're fostering connections to build your network to help you get ahead. So I was doing the hard work, like the brute force of skills development, but there is another, softer side of networking. And I'm not saying just get to know people just to get things, but I'm saying that my concern about getting ahead would not have suffered if I had just relaxed a little bit.

HELEN KIM: If there's one advice now that you could tell to the Northwestern community, what is that one advice that you would tell us?

DEBORAH DOUGLAS: You are enough. You are enough. Like you said, it's a high-pressure environment. And there's this narrative around having to be a certain thing or have all the things, or come from the right place.

If you're doing your due diligence, doing justice to yourself and to your work and your skills and your craft, then you are enough. And if you get an idea, and you decide that's a step or direction you want to go in, you don't have to get validation from other people to move in that direction. Their dream is their dream. Your dream is your dream. And if you allow people to put you in a box to decide what your limits are, then that will limit you.

So sometimes I call former students-- I was an adjunct at Medill for 12 years-- sometimes I call students out of the blue and go, hey, so what's next? What are you thinking about next? I know you're, like, being really humble and trying to dig into what you're doing, but where do you see yourself?

You know you're never going to be given permission to just do that thing. So you're going to have to be brave at some point. And I just want to let you know that you're enough.

HELEN KIM: Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Northwestern Intersections. For more information about our podcast, please visit northwestern.edu/intersections. Until next time, stay safe and take care of yourself and your families.