The program is a free 11-day college-level course in multimedia journalism and places successful graduates in eight-week paid multimedia internships at newspapers owned by Schurz Communications.

The 2012 academic program begins May 29 and runs through June 9. Participants begin their eight-week internships as soon as June 11.

Admission to the program is competitive. All expenses are paid. Applicants are recruited from historically black colleges and universities.

Students must be licensed drivers and need to have reliable vehicles for their internships. The 11-day multimedia course is intense. Students receive instruction at the Diversity Institute’s school facility in Nashville, Tenn., and can earn 3 hours of college credit from Belmont University.

Deadline to apply is March 9, 2012.

2012 Multimedia Scholars Application

Applying for the Multimedia Scholars program:

Send your application, resume, six work samples (writing, radio, video, photojournalism or graphic design), two letters of reference and a copy of your college transcript (unofficial transcripts will be accepted) to:

Val Hoeppner/Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, RE: Multimedia Scholars, 1207 18^th Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37212.

For inquiries and additional information, contact either Val Hoeppner, vhoeppner@freedomforum.org and 615/727-1410, or LaVondia Majors lmajors@freedomforum.org and 615/727-1401.

She oversees new media instruction for multimedia boot camps for journalism professionals and educators, the Chips Quinn Scholars program, the American Indian Journalism Institute, the Diversity Institute Multimedia Scholars Program and other Freedom Forum academic initiatives including mobile media training.

Hoeppner is an adjunct professor of journalism at Belmont University, Nashville. She is an Associated Press Photo Managers board member and a member of the Native American Journalists Association. She is a past president of the Indiana Associated Press Photo Managers Association.

Hoeppner served as a nominating juror for the 2011 Pulitzer Prizes and a judge for the 32nd Annual Society of News Design competition.

Hoeppner came to the Freedom Forum from The Indianapolis Star where she was the multimedia director and previously the deputy director of photography. Hoeppner spent 10 years as the photo editor and a staff photographer at the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D. Hoeppner has a bachelor’s degree from Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo. Contact Val Hoeppner

Anne Medley is a freelance photojournalist, videographer and multimedia producer based in Missoula, Mont. She earned her master’s in journalism at the University of Montana in 2008.

Medley teaches photojournalism at the University of Montana’s School of Journalism and has taught multimedia workshops with the Diversity Institute since 2008. She recently spent three months teaching multimedia journalism to university students in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of Congo in Focus, an entrepreneurial education project she developed. This past summer she taught video journalism in Perpignan, France with The Institute for Education in International Media. In the fall, she taught video workshops for the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Missoula.

Medley focuses much of her personal work on underrepresented communities and groups in the U.S. and abroad. She has shot and produced multimedia projects about AIDS in rural Montana, Native American Two Spirits (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Native Americans) and Congolese women working in prostitution, among others.
Contact Anne Medley

Danese Kenon graduated from Virginia State University with a degree in English. A six-week fellowship at The Poynter Institute followed. It was there she learned that visual journalism involved more than just “pretty pictures”; it also came with a responsibility to convey the truth. Kenon worked as a page-designer intern at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. She was a Fall 2000 Chips Quinn Scholar at The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., and later became a full-time photographer with the paper. A Pulliam Fellowship took Kenon to The Indianapolis Star, where she currently works as a multimedia journalist. Contact Danese Kenon

Reginald Owens is head of the Journalism Department and director of the news bureau at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. He is an associate professor and holds the F. Jay Taylor Endowed Chair of Journalism. He teaches news writing, media and culture, advertising, public relations and civic journalism. He also works with The Tech Talk student newspaper and Lagniappe student yearbook.

Research interests include the social history of the African-American press, race and diversity in the media, and African-American tourism.

Owens began his professional career as a police reporter at the Houston Post in 1972. He later worked for Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. in Houston in public relations and advertising.

Before coming to Louisiana Tech in 1997, Owens taught at Grambling State University and was publication director for The Gramblinite student newspaper. Owens also has taught in Houston at Texas Southern University, and in Austin at Huston-Tillotson College and Austin Community College. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas-Austin, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation and Zambia Institute for Mass Communication in Lusaka, Zambia.

During summer sabbaticals, he has worked in the newsrooms of The Mobile (Ala.) Register, The Tennessean in Nashville, The Times Picayune in New Orleans, The Philadelphia Tribune, and in Austin, Texas, at The American-Statesman and Nokoa Observer. He has written tourism articles for Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine and website, and the website of Louisianatravel.com. He worked as reporter and managing editor for The (Houston) Informer and Texas Freedman.

Owens has been recognized for journalism excellence by the Louisiana Press Women Association, National Federation of Press Women, Texas Gulf Coast Press Association and National Newspaper Publishers Association. He was named Journalism Educator of the Year in 1997 by the Youth Journalism Congress at Tennessee State University, Nashville, and in 1996, Journalism Education of the Year by the Southeast Journalism Conference. He received the 2001 Merv Aubespin Award for Contributions to Mass Communication Education from the Black College Communication Association. He is a career mentor and training instructor for the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute Multimedia Scholars program. He has worked Black College Wire, a news service for black college newspapers and black college students.

Owens is on the board of directors of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and the Shreveport Journalism Foundation. He is a member of the Friends of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum Committee and the Grambling Chamber of Commerce.

He received a Ph.D. in journalism from the University of Texas-Austin, a master’s in advertising from the University of Illinois-Urbana and a bachelor’s in journalism from Louisiana Tech.
His interest in journalism began at the school newspaper at Grambling High School, where he served as reporter, advertising manager and editor. Contact Reginald Owens

Bill Elsen finished a 33 1/2-year career, primarily as an editor, at The Washington Post in March 2004. From 1994-2001, he was a director of recruiting and hiring for the newsroom.

He is an editor for americaswire.org, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and John Snow Inc., a public health research and consulting firm. He is an adjunct faculty member for the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University.
From May 2004 until June 2010, he was an editor and career development director for reznetnews.org, a Native American news, information and entertainment Web site that trained and mentored Native college students preparing for journalism careers. He was a contributing editor at the newspaper association’s Presstime magazine for five years until it was folded in April 2009.

Elsen travels to universities, conventions, and college and high school workshops to work with young journalists.

At The Post, Elsen started as a sports copy editor and finished on the Metro tab desk as a slot. Before becoming director of recruiting and hiring, he spent a month shy of 13 years as a night and assignment editor on the National desk. He also worked at The Post as executive sports editor, metro staff writer, assistant foreign editor, night city editor and night news editor.

Before joining The Post, he was a reporter in Saigon, Vietnam, for Stars and Stripes; a reporter and copy editor for the Nashville (Tenn.) Banner; a sports copy editor for the Tennessean in Nashville; and a sports writer for the Washington (D.C.) Daily News, where he was named sports editor in 1969.
Elsen has taught at four Freedom Forum Diversity Institute programs—the American Indian Journalism Institute at the University of South Dakota; the Multimedia Scholars Program at Vanderbilt University; the Chips Quinn Scholars Program in Washington, D.C., and Nashville; and the Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop in Crazy Horse, S.D.

He has also taught at the Editing Program for Minority Journalists at the University of Arizona; the Oklahoma Institute for Diversity in Journalism at the University of Oklahoma; the Management Seminar for College News Editors at the University of Georgia; the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland; and the Journalism Institute for High School Students at Catholic University of America in Washington. He taught at the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association’s summer institute in Chapel Hill from 1994 through 2006.

Elsen has consulted at Vanderbilt, DePauw, Iowa State, North Carolina State, Kansas State, Northwest Missouri State and Virginia Tech universities, and the universities of South Dakota, Nebraska, Mississippi and Montana.

He has conducted workshops at the American Press Institute, a National Writers Workshop and conventions of the American Copy Editors Society. Since 2004, he has been editor-in-residence at the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers fall convention and the CMA spring convention. He is an honorary CMA member.

In March 2002, Elsen was presented the Charles R. O’Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association at Columbia University. In 1979, he had been awarded CSPA’s Gold Key. In June 2003, he was given the Kay Phillips Distinguished Service Award by the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association at the University of North Carolina. Contact Bill Elsen

LaVondia Majors is program coordinator for the Diversity Institute and is based at the Freedom Forum’s John Seigenthaler Center in Nashville, Tenn. A native of Old Hickory, Tenn., she earned an associates degree in visual communications from Nashville State Community College. She is a graduate of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green with a major in photojournalism and minors in English and broadcasting.

As a Chips Quinn Scholar in 2002, LaVondia interned at the Vero Beach Press Journal in Florida. Later, she interned with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Charlotte Observer before returning to Nashville for two years as a staff photographer at the Tennessean. Contact LaVondia Majors

John Seigenthaler, founder of the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, visited with the 2011 class of Multimedia Scholars, June 2, 2011. Below are stories written by the scholars about that visit.

A Dark Side to Our National Culture

By DACIA IDOM

There are moments in American history that are painful for John Seigenthaler. He would rather forget.
“There has always been a dark side to our national culture,” said Seigenthaler, founder of The First Amendment Center.

The darkness of the past was all Seigenthaler saw when a Klansman knocked him unconscious as he tried to protect a Freedom Rider in Montgomery, Ala.

The hatred and anger of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan was reflected in the violence they inflicted upon the students who participated in the freedom rides.

Yet, despite the dangers, he said the riders refused to accept the contradiction between the rights they read about in textbooks and the treatment they received downtown when they were denied service at lunch counters.

He also said the media ignored segregation issues in the South until the freedom rides brought attention to the problem.

In response to the violence inflicted on the Freedom Riders in 1961, Seigenthaler went to Alabama to negotiate with Gov. John Patterson. He was assigned the responsibility as the administration assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Fifty years later, he said prejudice remains but is expressed through much quieter methods. He also said the freedom riders were fighting visible hatred, but “today, the challenge is so hazy.”

However, the blurriness of racial tension came into focus when Seigenthaler saw images of families sleeping in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina blew the roof off the structure.

“Where have reporters been?,” Seigenthaler said. The people who suffered the most were the people who were suffering before.”

As he ended his talk, he said to the 2011 multimedia scholars that the journalist’s responsibility is to the forgotten people and problems that society overlooks.

“Every reporter has to be an investigative reporter,” he said. “The flowers aren’t all gone. The problems are still there.”

Seigenthaler and the Freedom Rides

By AARON SAUNDERS

When John Seigenthaler became an administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, he recalls seeing the job as an escape from an unresponsive newspaper editor. Instead, he soon found himself being attacked by a violent mob in Montgomery, Ala.

Seigenthaler, a longtime journalist and founder of the first Amendment Center in his native Nashville, recounted the story yesterday in a question-and-answer session with student multimedia scholars at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute.

Initially Seignethaler was hesitant to leave and help the Attorney General with his book, however when the Tennessean fired hard hitting news editor Coleman A. Harwell and hired Nashville’s associated press bureau Chief he knew it was time to go. “ I left to escape a trap,” Seigenthaler said.

At Kennedy’s instructions in late May 1961, Seigenthaler said, he flew to Birmingham to help rescue the Freedom Riders, students riding buses into the Deep South to challenge Jim Crow segregation laws, from the violent local reaction. “They could have sent the marshals in there, but they sent me,” Seigenthaler said.

At the Alabama state capitol, Seigenthaler met with Gov. John Patterson to attempt brokering a deal to get the Freedom Riders safely out of the sate. “I’ve never been in a room with that much electricity,” he said, recalling that Patterson’s cabinet also attended.

According to Seigenthaler, Patterson would not consent to protect people who did not want to be protected, “At the time I thought he was an asshole,” Seigenthaler said. However after Floyd Mann director of public safety promised that he could protect the riders, Patterson relented and agreed to protect the riders all the way to the state line. “When Floyd said he could protect the riders that let the air out of the room, ” Seigenthaler said.

With a deal in place and a police escort, the riders boarded the greyhound bus and headed toward Mississippi with the belief that they were now safe to move through Alabama. Unfortunately this was false hope and as the bus reached city limits the escort disappeared and the busses were left un-chaperoned.

After arriving in Montgomery the riders got off the bus and it seemed to all a normal day, this changed when a mob began to assemble at the station.

Seigenthaler arrived a short period of time only to find that violence had erupted and noticed Caucasian Freedom Rider Susan Wilbur fighting off angry pursuers. He got out of his car to retrieve Wilbur and while explaining who he was to assailants he was knocked unconscious from behind after a blow to the head a pipe.

Seigenthaler woke up 25 minutes later in an agent’s car “I never felt the blow, I never felt the pain… when I woke up in the passenger seat I thought to myself John is going to be mad then passed out again. He said, recalling how bloody the shirt he borrowed from Assistant Attorney General John Doar.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the freedom rides that are chronicled on PBS and has commentary of the riders, historians, Patterson, and Seigenthaler.

“After watching the documentary I thought he was an even bigger asshole,” Seigenthaler said recalling the way in which Patterson portrayed himself in the documentary.

Seigenthaler Makes a Big Impact

By ASHLEY GRIFFIN

Learning Associated Press style and how to write a “hard” news lead are part of daily duties at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute. Today, John Seigenthaler’s low-key appearance made a bigger impact.

Before his visit, the institute’s multimedia scholars watched the PBS documentary “Freedom Riders,” which aired last month to mark the 50^th anniversary of the tumultuous student bus rides into the segregated Deep South.

The documentary also helped students generate questions for the informal question-and-answer session with Seigenthaler.

A Nashville native, Seigenthaler, 83, is known for his work with the Freedom Riders when he served as administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, worked for 43 years with the Tennessean newspaper as a reporter, editor, publisher and CEO.

In May 1961, Kennedy sent Seigenthaler to negotiate safe passage with Alabama Gov. John Patterson during the peak of violence that greeted the bus riders after they left Washington, D.C., in two waves.

Of Patterson, who insisted to Seigenthaler that Alabama could protect the riders from harm, Seigenthaler said quite seriously, “Well, I thought he was an asshole before, but after watching the film, I thought he was a bigger asshole.” Seigenthaler was referring to Patterson’s remarks as the former governor, now 90, was interviewed 50 years later in the film.

In Montgomery, one of several places where violence greeted the riders, Seigenthaler was struck on the head with a pipe and knocked unconscious while trying to protect a rider.

“I have never in my life been knocked out,” Seigenthaler said. “I never felt the blow, the pain.”

Seigenthaler said he was hit with “part of the pipe” and sensed that he was left on the ground for about 25 minutes.

He recalled awakening in the passenger seat of a car, then blacking out again and awakening in a hospital.

In 1962, Seigenthaler returned to the Tennessean as editor. He retains the title chairman emeritus and left the scholars with career advice.

“All journalism is storytelling,” Seigenthaler said. “It’s what we do. We need storytellers with all sorts of different experiences.”

Wikipedia and John Seigenthaler

By BRANDON COLEY

John Seigenthaler vividly remembers receiving a phone call from his son, who asked, “Dad have you seen Wikipedia? They are saying untrue things about you!”

“First I laughed, and then I was mad,” Seigenthaler, a longtime journalist and founder of the First Amendment Center in his native Nashville, said of an article about him on Wikipedia.org.

Seigenthaler’s remarks came yesterday in a question-and-answer session with students in the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute’s multimedia scholars program.

Enter Wikipedia, maybe a bunch of good information, but according Seigenthaler, who was a poison-pen citizen journalism victim, “I would not use Wikipedia as a credible source.” Wikipedia was not the only website with false information, Reference.com and Answers.com had the same bogus text, also discovered by his son, John Seigenthaler Jr., journalist with NBC News.

In May 2005, Seigenthaler later recounted in USA today, an anonymous author wrote “John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960’s. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.”

Partially correct, Seigenthaler was the assistant Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He was also his pallbearer. “I became serious about being mad, and then I got help to find the perpetrator,” said Seigenthaler.

After weeks of battling with, Internet service providers and help from Daniel Brandt, founder of the anti-Wikipedia site “Wikipedia Watch.” John gathered the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the anonymous post and eventually caught up with the violator.

Brian Chase, of Nashville, Tennessee, admitted to anonymously posting the Wikipedia article. Chase told Seigenthaler it was prank played on a friend.

The Media and Civil Rights Movement

By DONYELLE DAVIS

In 1961 many Black youth came to a crossroads. On one path was the choice to champion the desegregation of interstate buses in southern America by sacrificing their freedom, forfeiting their education and jeopardizing their lives. On the other path was the choice to sit quietly and wait for someone else to fight the battle for them. Many chose the former.

The 1961 Freedom Riders, primarily comprised of Black college students, risked all they had to oppose the injustices of segregation on interstate transportation. Prior to the movement, most of the American public either turned a blind eye to the practice, embraced it or did not actively see it at all. This movement opened the eyes of hundreds of people through media coverage caused by the uproar; among them was First Amendment activist and journalist John Seigenthaler Sr.

Students in the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute Multimedia Scholars program were given the rare opportunity to interview and converse with the Pulitzer Prize journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. Wednesday at the John Seigenthaler Center in Nashville, TN. Seigenthaler has been affiliated with the Freedom Forum for 20 years due to his extensive journalistic accolades and promotion of civil rights throughout his career. Seigenthaler shared his early experiences with newsroom diversity in both coverage and staff and the importance of media diversity to the exposure of issues that would not be addressed otherwise.

He recalled the racially tense media environment he worked in at the Tennessean prior to the civil rights movement and the contribution diversity makes to good storytelling.

“In ’49 that was a totally different type of newsroom, all white. It was relatively easy by the time I [started working for] the Kennedy administration to know that I could and had to change that,” Seigenthaler said. “We need storytellers with all sorts of different experiences.”

He recalled the role Black youth played during the 60s by encouraging the media to address the civil rights movement. He argues that media did not make it a priority to publicize the violence and injustices Blacks constantly endured, until the Black youth decided to bring the injustices to the forefront through the 1961 freedom rides.

“There has always been a dark side to our national culture,” Seigenthaler said. “The media didn’t make the point, until the children made the point.”

“Poverty is not gone away”

BY KENTA JOSEPH

Images of impoverished families sleeping on cots and standing in food lines in the New Orleans’ Louisiana Superdome during Hurricane Katrina still haunt John Seigenthaler.

“Poverty is not gone away,” said Seigenthaler as he recalled the television images of the aftermath of Katrina.

“We’ve just papered it over and you lift a roof off a building like a scab off of a running sore and suddenly you realize: ‘Where have reporters been?’” said Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, which is located in a building that bears his name.

Seigenthaler noted Katrina to urge 12 student journalists to dig deeper and look beyond the surface in reporting. This was their first day of nearly two weeks training at the Diversity Institute for multimedia.

He told the students, who were preparing for an 8-week internship, that they have a unique opportunity to tell the stories of the underrepresented.

“There’s always been a dark side to our national culture,” Seigenthaler said. “Today that challenge is not as prominent as it once was, but there are events that occur that remind us that it’s still there.”

Seignthaler also cited the Freedom Riders – who were mostly college students in Nashville, Tenn. – during the height of the Civil Rights Movement as an example of how society can remain blind.

The black and white Freedom Riders endured beatings in Alabama and were met with violence and imprisonment in Mississippi for traveling together on buses challenging the Jim Crow segregation laws of the South.

These students just reached a point where there was a major contradiction between what they read in textbooks and their experiences in downtown Nashville, he said.

Seigenthaler encouraged the student journalists to look into his or her own mind and heart to find the problems of society that must be challenged.

The First Amendment, he said, allow journalists to share and impact society by exposing the stories of “injustice, indecency and indignity.”

Election of Barack Obama

By LAURA GONZALEZ

As much as John Seigenthaler wanted to believe Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s remark in 1968 that in the next 40 years a Negro could become president, he says he could not.

Forty years later, Seigenthaler described to students how he teared up as news broke that Barack Obama had been elected president.

“I never thought I’d see the day when African-Americans would sleep as husband and wife in the White House,” Seigenthaler said.

The longtime journalist and founder of the First Amendment Center spoke to 12 young reporters in the multimedia scholars program at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute in his native Nashville.

As Kennedy’s administrative assistant in May 1961, Seigenthaler was sent to help student Freedom Riders travel peacefully on interstate buses in their attempt to end segregation in the Deep South. He was knocked unconscious while trying to intervene with an angry mob surrounding one student in Montgomery, Ala.

Seigenthaler had seen enough racism and hatred toward African-Americans, specifically in the South that he thought people who were saying they were voting for Obama would enter the booth and secretly not do so.

“They would not vote for McCain, but vote against Obama,” Seigenthaler said.

He urged the students to improve their investigative reporting skills and not to wait for something big to happen to start discovering the suffering of a community.

Seigenthaler said that when tragedy strikes the people who suffer the most are the people who were suffering before.

He asserts that racism still exists, but it is more difficult to fight it now because it is subtler.

“It was much easier to attack an evil that was visible and palpable,” Seigenthaler said.

Finding a Niche as a Journalist

By MAYA JONES

As a journalist, John Seigenthaler experienced years of covering assignments, making life-long connections, and seeking out the news. As top aide to Robert F. Kennedy, Seigenthaler took on challenges, and most commonly became the news. From Seigenthaler’s time as a writer for The Tennessean to being caught in the crossfire of racial injustice, Seigenthaler’s occupations became more than just a job.

Seigenthaler, 84, found his niche as a journalist for The Tennessean newspaper. Seigenthaler’s years of dedication, skills and connections as a reporter covering the Kennedy Administration paved the way for higher positions, including the job of top aide to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

“(Kennedy) asked me if I would help him write a book,” Seigenthaler said. And I extended my leave from the newspaper as I completed my year at Harvard. I worked with him for a year.”

Seigenthaler’s time with Kennedy was extended from what was initially only one year. At the same time, problems of segregation in the Deep South slowly began taking a toll on the United States. These problems in the South would indirectly lead to Seigenthaler experiencing first-hand the dangers of the fight for freedom.

Leading the fight was volunteers, black and white, who decided to challenge “separate but equal” laws by staging sit-ins, walking into prohibited areas, and mingling with each other. The volunteers traveled via bus services through some of the most dangerous parts of the south, ranging from Georgia to Louisiana. This group became known as the Freedom Riders.

“In that time, it was relatively easy to make the point about the injustice,” Seigenthaler said. “The interesting thing is that the media didn’t make that point until the children made that point. Before the demonstrations started, the media didn’t make anything.”

Seigenthaler’s vivid descriptions of the riders painted them as a resilient people, using non-violence to get their points across.

“They went to school to learn how to take the beating, to not respond to it, and to use non-violence as a weapon against the thugs, against statutes, the ordinances and the Supreme Court decisions,” Seigenthaler said.

As the Freedom Riders traveled through Birmingham, Ala. with dreams of desegregation, those who opposed these ideas planned to make the riders’ trip one of great pain. These horrific American tragedies would not only serve as a turning point in the Civil Rights movement, but also the Kennedy Administration.

‘Mind of the South’

By NATHALIA RAWLS

John Seigenthaler, 83, still reminisces about the two African-American nannies that cared for him as a child. At the time, Mr. Seigenthaler admits that he and many other white Americans were guilty of being blind to the black population who passed them in daily encounters. “Where was my head? Where was my heart? Where were my parents?” he asked.

Seigenthaler had never given any serious thought to the struggles of the black Americans, until he received a book entitled, “Mind of the South,” from his 11^th grade math teacher. After being inspired by the writing of W.J. Cash, John began reading other books, articles and poems about the movement. These manuscripts revealed the southern society in which he lived, and now his eyes had been opened.

A lot of the contributions that John Seigenthaler has made throughout his journalistic career and short work in politics during the Kennedy administration was steered by the realization he had come to face as a teenager. Since then, Mr. Seigenthaler has been a major influence in the 1961 Freedom Rides and is a strong advocate of First Amendment rights of free expression.

Meeting with Dr. King

By QUAME HAMLIN

Describing a private meeting between the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the tumultuous Freedom Rides in May 1961, John Seigenthaler told student journalists yesterday, “It was a very pleasant conversation for two fellows who were talking in different directions.”

Seigenthaler, 83, a lifelong resident of Nashville who spent most of his career at the Tennessean newspaper there, was then an administrative assistant to Attorney General Kennedy. He made the comment in a discussion with the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute’s multimedia scholars.

Seigenthaler was a key factor in keeping the student “Freedom Riders” alive as they rode interstate buses from Washington, D.C., and Nashville in efforts to peacefully protest segregation in the Deep South.

Before meeting with Seigenthaler, the students viewed “Freedom Riders,” a two-hour PBS documentary that aired May 16 and detailed the bus rides and the violent reaction that greeted them, primarily in Alabama.

In recounting the King-Kennedy meeting, Seigenthaler said, “I have described Robert Kennedy that day as the ultimate pragmatist and Martin King as the ultimate idealist because his response was perfect.”

Seigenthaler paraphrased King’s words in explaining the minister’s response to Kennedy’s plea that he defuse the growing roar of the civil rights movement.

According to Seigenthaler, King said he understood the FBI director’s position that the rides should not take place and said the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was conducting a voter registration drive.

Seigenthaler said King told Kennedy in rejecting the request, “But as to the larger questions, I must confront evil where it exists, wherever it exists. And then, he really gave him the bad news. He said, ‘And I must dramatize it.’ ”

Siegenthaler then described his sense of the situation at the meeting’s end:

“I ran across my notes on this interview between the two of them and when it was over, I made a note that Robert Kennedy, in his mind thought, ‘There goes the [Democratic] South in four years.”

Seigenthaler and his role in the Freedom Rides

By SYLVIA ODELL

In many ways, John Seigenthaler represents the racial growth of the United States of America.

He explained this growth by describing his childhood view of his black nannies as “invisible” – where he didn’t really see or think about them. He compared this to his “weeping with happiness” when Barack Obama was elected president.

“I had to wait 83 years to get it done and the country had to wait far much longer than that,” Seigenthaler said of the election of the first African-American U.S. president.

He spoke Wednesday to 12 students in the Diversity Institute’s Multimedia Scholars program who were beginning a nearly 2-week training program before going on an 8-week internship program.

When questioned on about his views of African-American’s during his childhood, he compared his and many whites’ attitudes at the time to the character in novelist Ralph Ellison’s book “Invisible Man” whose black identity was lost in a society of prejudice and hostility.

“It’s such a hard thing to admit, hard even to think about it,” he said. “If I answered your question by saying ‘look I’m neutral on the subject’ it would sound so phony, so Klan-like. If I said to you I sat on a street corner and watched them (blacks) get into streetcars and never saw them, you’d say that’s impossible. It is impossible ‘til you read Ralph Ellison and know what an invisible man or woman can be.”

Seigenthaler tells the students that like many, he lived in a world where certain things – such as race – especially in the South, just were.

“I was so encased in this unwillingness of my parents to tell me what I deserved to hear, what I needed to hear, what the whole society should have heard. I go back over that and say ‘Where was my head, where was my heart, where were my parents, my teachers (who) never once told me about the injustice?’” Seigenthaler said of the racial problems in the South.

Seigenthaler said it wasn’t until he was in high school that he began to think differently. “My teacher gave me a book called ‘Mind of the South’ by W.J. Cash, and as I read it, I began to think for the first time,” he said.

He explained how reading more books, articles and poems including material by black poets Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen helped him realize how misinformed he’d been on racial matters.

Another thing that helped shape Seigenthaler’s views on race was his role in helping to protect the Freedom Riders when he was a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy in 1961. Seigenthaler was asked to go to Alabama after two busses of Freedom Riders were met with violence.

When the Freedom Riders rode into Alabama, they were met by mobs. One of the busses was forced to stop in Anniston where a mob threw smoke bombs inside while the riders were still on it. In a PBS Freedom Riders documentary, the riders described how their lungs filled with smoke. They evacuated the bus choking, only to be beat up once they got outside. The other bus stopped in Birmingham and was met by a mob at the bus station where they were also beaten.

“The President was about to go overseas and then there was this violence that occurred in Anniston and Birmingham,” Seigenthaler said. “They could have sent the Marshall’s in at that point, instead the choose to send me.”

Seigenthaler thought this mission would be easy after he got them safely on a plane from Alabama to New Orleans.

“I had delivered them to New Orleans in a couple of hours. Then I get the phone call the next morning saying, ‘Who is Diane Nash,’” said Seigenthaler referring to the young African-American woman who organized the second set of Freedom Riders from Fisk University.

Seigenthaler then found himself in a series of events that took him from begging the next group not to come, to negotiating with the governor of Alabama for their safety, to getting knocked unconscious during a riot while trying to protect the riders. Seignethaler found himself actively defending the same race he didn’t actively see during the early part of his life and during the Civil Rights Movement the nation’s mindset began to change as well.

Fast forward to 2008 when President Obama was elected. “Bobby Kennedy said in 25 years we could have an African-American president, I didn’t think I would see it in my lifetime. I didn’t think he could defeat Hillary for the nomination, I didn’t think he could win the presidency. The stain of racism was buried so deeply, that I thought it would be impossible. But I was elated,” said Seigenthaler.

Brandon Coley, Senior, Winston-Salem State University

Journalism experience: New York Times Student Journalism Institute (2010) graphic artist, The News Argus, Winston-Salem State’s student publication, online producer and graphics editor.
Brandon is a graphic artist, graphics reporter, cartoonist and online producer. He would like to create in-depth graphics and multimedia projects during his internship.

Donyelle Davis, Graduate Student, Louisiana State University

Journalism experience: The Tech Talk, Louisiana Tech University student newspaper. Served as news editor, reporter and associate managing editor.
Donyelle has a passion for government and political reporting. She is interested in working as government/general assignment reporter during her internship.

Laura Gonzalez, Graduate – May 2011, California State University, Northridge

Journalism experience: El Nuevo Sol, editor-in-chief, Roundup, opinion editor and New York Times Student Journalism Institute - 2010 multimedia and general reporting.
Laura is bilingual and wants to put her language skills to use during her internship. She is interested in work as a general assignment and multimedia reporter.

Ashley Griffen, Graduate - May 2011, North Carolina Central University

Journalism experience: Campus Echo, NCCU student newspaper, editor-in-chief, staff writer, sports writer.
Ashley has covered many beats while working at the Campus Echo at NCCU including sports, investigative, government and general assignment. She is interested in general assignment and multimedia reporting during her internship.

Quame’ Hamlin, Junior, Norfolk State University

Journalism experience: Spartan Echo, multimedia editor and reporter. NSU-TV, multimedia reporter, anchor and host.
Quame’ hopes to work mainly as a multimedia reporter during his internship.

Dacia Idom, Senior, Louisiana Tech University

Journalism experience: The Tech Talk, LA Tech University, staff reporter and photographer. Photojournalist for, Lagniappe, the LA Tech yearbook.
Dacia is a photography major at LA Tech and a strong writer. She hopes to work mainly as a photojournalist and multimedia journalist during her internship.

Maya Jones, Senior, Xavier University

Journalism experience: Maya Jones is a native of New Orleans, LA. She has worked as both an intern and freelance sports writer for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. She is sports editor of The Xavier Herald at Xavier University and works for the Xavier student publication, Exposed.
Maya is interested in covering sports during her internship and producing multimedia content to accompany that coverage.

Kenta Joseph, Graduate Student, Florida A&M University

Journalism experience: The FAMUAN, FAMU’s student newspaper, staff reporter and online contributor to Journey Magazine, online contributor.
Kenta is a strong writer and would like to work as a general assignment reporter and multimedia journalist during her internship.

Sylvia Obell, Senior, North Carolina A&T University

Journalism experience: The A&T Register, NCA&T newspaper, news editor and reporter.
Sylvia is interested in features and general assignment reporting during her internship.

Charles Pulliam, Senior, University of Montana

Journalism experience: Charles most recently worked as a part-time sports writer covering the University of Montana and high school sports at The Missoulian, in Missoula, Montana. He has twice been an intern for the Associated Press, once in Denver as a sports writer and once in Sioux Falls, South Dakota as a general assignment reporter.
Charles is interested in writing for the sports section and producing sports related multimedia projects.

Natalia Rawls, Senior, Fort Valley State University

Journalism experience: Peachite Newspaper, contributor, WFVS-TV 10 News reporter, Voice-X-Pressed Blog, writer, Voices of the Valley Newsletter, writer and Flame Yearbook, contributor.
Natalia has some writing experience but has primarily worked in video. She hopes to produce multimedia packages during her internship.

Aaron Saunders, Senior, North Carolina Central University

Journalism experience: The Campus Echo, NCCU newspaper, sports writer and assistant editor. The Durham Voice, reporter and photographer.
Aaron would like to work as a sports writer or general assignment reporter during his internship.