How I became a Herald reporter in 1970: Somebody believed in me, and so did I

It was on June 16, 1970, that I transitioned from a Miami Herald file clerk in the paper’s library (or morgue as we called it), to a Miami Herald news reporter. That was 54 years ago, today.

While that was my first day as a reporter, actually, my journey at The Miami Herald started on the first Monday of January 1966, when I was hired as a file clerk.

The 1960s era was an important time for change in America. The 1964 Civil Rights act had been signed into law on July 2, 1964, by President Lyndon B. Johnson, just a year and a half before I joined The Herald. The law prohibited discrimination in public places and provided for integration of schools and other public facilities. It also made employment discrimination illegal.

I was a 26-year-old widow with two young sons, working as a maid for $8 a day, when the law was passed. I had no employee benefits and often went to work ill, because I could not afford to have an unpaid day off. The new law gave me courage to believe that I could do better; that I could get a better job- one with benefits.

So, fueled by the new law and my ambition for a better life for me and my two sons, every Sunday after church and our traditional Sunday dinner, I read the comics to my sons and later searched the help wanted section, looking the ads with the phrase, “We are an equal opportunity employer”.

However, I learned quickly that not all businesses that used that phrase in their ads really meant it. And even if they did, they often had already reached their own one-Black-per-business quota.

Even so, whenever I saw an ad with the “equal opportunity” phrase, and it was a position that I felt qualified for, I applied. Many times, I got my feelings hurt. Like the time when I proudly told the interviewer over the phone that I was a graduate of Booker T. Washington High School. At that time the schools in Miami-Dade County were still segregated. Graduating from BTW could only mean one thing: I was Black.

Up to that point she spoke politely and encouraging to me. Upon learning what high school I had graduated from, she started sputtering nervously and said, “Let me get my supervisor to speak to you.”

A male voice came on the phone and said abruptly, “that job has been filled, as of right now” and hung up.

That was in the fall of 1965. Then came the day, a few weeks later, when I saw the ad for a file clerk at The Miami Herald. The ad had the encouraging “equal opportunity” phrase, but there was no phone number. Rather, there was a post office box address, which meant I had to write a letter of application. That was smart, I thought. That way they will know how well I can write and/or spell.

Not only did the ad give me the opportunity to show my writing aplomb, it also gave me the opportunity to honor the late Mrs. Jane Lewis, my junior business teacher at Booker T., by using the skills she had taught me when I was in the eighth grade.

I didn’t have a typewriter, but I had a nice cursive handwriting, which was also taught to me at the Black elementary schools that I attended. To make sure my lines were straight, I placed a lined sheet of paper under a plain sheet of paper and wrote my letter. Although I wasn’t required to, I also sent a resume, just to let them know that I knew what a resume was.

Two or three days later, I got a letter asking me to come to The Herald for an in-person interview. A few days later, I got a call from the paper telling me I had the job if I wanted it. I called out to my mom to tell her the good news: “Momma, I got the job at The Herald. I’ll be earning $60 a week plus benefits,” I said happily.

My younger son, Shawn, was only 5 at the time. When he heard me tell Mom how much I’d be paid, he started jumping and shouting “Oh, Mommy, we’re rich! We’re rich!”

I’d been working in the library for a year and a half when a friend encouraged me to enroll in Miami-Dade Community College. I selected education as my major because becoming a teacher was a “safe” profession, along with nursing and social work, for Blacks back then. Besides, I had my mother to contend with; she was my babysitter. I couldn’t waste her time by playing around with trying to become a journalist or an artist. After all, she didn’t know of any Black journalists, and all the artists she knew about were poor and/or struggling.

While attending Miami-Dade Community College, my work hours fluctuated. It was while I worked an evening shift that I became friends with the late Fred Shaw, then vice president of development for the college. He was also the book editor for the Miami Herald and would come in the evenings to pick up the books he would review.

One day I asked him to read a paper I had written for a class. When he had read it, he asked me, “Bea, what is your major?”

I told him I was studying to become a teacher. “You need to change your major to journalism,” he told me.

I laughed and said, “Where would I get a job? This paper won’t hire me, I’m Black.”

Mr. Shaw didn’t crack a smile. He looked at me and said, “Bea, things are changing in this country. You need to be ready for the change.” And just like that, I changed my major and got in the journalism class of the late, great Barbara Garfunkel, who encouraged me to write for the school paper.

I was beginning to believe that my dream of becoming a journalist was on the threshold of coming true. I was even more encouraged when the paper hired my elementary school friend, the late Thiralee Smith, as the first full-time Black staff reporter (Bobby Reid, then a student at the University of Miami, had been a sports stringer.

The times were changing, just as Mr. Shaw had said. However, things in the newsroom were not changing fast enough. Thiralee faced blatant racism as the only Black reporter on staff. One day, after he’d been at the paper for about a year, he told me, “Bea, enough is enough. I can’t take this anymore.”

I begged him to stay. “If you leave, there won’t be any Black representation in the newsroom,” I said, close to tears. His mind was made up.

There was still hope. Juanita Greene and Helen Coram entered my life, two white colleagues who befriended me and encouraged me not to give up on my dream. Both are deceased now.

Before Juanita and Helen, there was my high school journalism teacher, Marian Shannon, who encouraged my writing way back in the 1950s. Her support never ceased, and I am forever thankful that God allowed her to live to see me accomplish my/our dream.

However, it was Juanita and Helen, who had read some of my articles that I wrote for then The Falcon Times, took them to Larry Jinks, then the managing editor of the paper, and asked him to give me a chance.

On June 1, 1970, I was home on my day off when I got a call from my friend Hazel Ashmore in the library, asking me why I hadn’t told her about my promotion. She was angry that I’d kept the secret from her. The truth was, the secret was kept from me, too. Everyone on the fifth floor knew that I was the new reporter. Everyone except me. They forgot to tell me.

Armed with Hazel’s news, I called my supervisor, Luis Bueno, who was also off that day. He confirmed the news and told me Larry Jinks would see me the next day.

To say I was excited to see Mr. Jinks would be an understatement. I knew he was putting his own reputation on the line for me. The pressure was heavy. But Larry was giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, I couldn’t let him down. I was hired on a three-month trial basis and given a $10-a-week raise.

My first day on the job was June 16, 1970. The night before, a racial disturbance had started about a mile west of where I lived in Liberty City. When I walked into the city room, Mr. Jinks met me and asked me if I knew about the riot. I didn’t. “Would you be afraid to cover it?’ he asked. In my mind I was saying, “Is Brer Rabbit scared of the briar patch?” Liberty City was where I lived.

So, dressed in my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and wearing high-heeled shoes, I joined the other reporters covering Miami’s second racial disturbance. I wrote my first story that day, just a short one about a hustler who was losing business because of the riot. It ran on the front page.

I’d worked three weeks when Mr. Jinks met me in the newsroom one morning and told me to forget the three-month trial; the job was mine if I wanted it. My dream had come true. The years of people laughing (some even in my face) at my dream of becoming a journalist; the nay-sayers who told me, “You will never amount to anything,” didn’t matter anymore. Somebody believed in me. More than that, thank God, I believed in me.