Few civil rights events reached the
national television audience as did the March on Washington. Looking back
on the summer's action just before the March, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
in an ABC television interview, argued that the events of the spring and
summer "brought all these issues out into the open and brought them
to the surface where everybody could see them." As the date for the
March on Washington grew closer, the extent of television coverage became
part of the story. Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents
from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would
be set up than had filmed the last Presidential inauguration. One camera
was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas
of the marchers.
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Television networks interviewed participants in the
march, carried the speeches, offered news commentary on the events, and
queried Congressmen. A. C. Nielson recorded huge jumps in television viewing
for the March on Washington. Europeans saw it as well, in coverage "that
rivaled that given astronaut landings." The BBC devoted major evening
programming to the march and broadcast live coverage as received from
the Telestar satellite. Southern senators and representatives gave terse
comments that the march would have no effect at all on voting in Congress
and would not influence the Civil Rights Bill's passage. Senator Strom
Thurmond of South Carolina believed that the telecast to Europe was misleading
to people there because they would be led to conclude that African Americans
have no freedom.
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The local news channels in Virginia, perhaps flooded with national programming
and coverage of the march, focused on local stories. At the Southern Governor's
Conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs West
Virginia, WDBJ television crews filmed press conferences and statements
from the participants. With protestors outside the gates of the Greenbrier
carrying signs denouncing Alabama Governor George Wallace and Mississippi
Governor Ross Barnett, the group's chairman Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus
wanted no grandstanding. In his opening remarks Faubus argued that consideration
of controversial topics would only dampen the group's effectiveness. While
Faubus warned against "playing to the press," Alabama Governor
George Wallace puffed on a long cigar and prepared to introduce resolutions
condemning the March on Washington.
But the southern governors were decidedly moderate
in their views by August 1963. West Virginia Governor W. W. Barron went
out to the gates of the Greenbrier to greet protestors and shake hands
with them. Most of them were students at Marshall University and West
Virginia State College. Wallace meanwhile scoffed that "they're just
practicing up for Washington." Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett
pushed his colleagues to champion a "relocation" plan to spread
African Americans across the states to achieve a 90 percent white majority
everywhere. Barnett's fanciful scheme drew little support.
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All of the television stations in
Roanoke broadcast their national network programming covering the March
on Washington. WDBJ broadcast it from 10-10:30, 12-12:15, and 7:30-8:30,
WSLS from 2-2:30, 4:30-5, and 11:15-11:30. This intense national coverage
by the networks and broadcast over the local affiliates might explain
why local news crews at WDBJ and WSLS might not have covered the event
in great detail. The Roanoke newspapers were filled with the local story
of two trapped coal miners in the days just before the march and their
heroic rescue by crews working feverishly against long odds. This story
captured the attention of the local press.
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Summing up the march as a televised event, Jack Gould
of the
New York Times claimed it was "something that had
to be seen to be felt." The march was an "editorial in movement"
whose "eloquence could not be the same in only frozen word or stilled
picture." Gould argued that television was "proving an indispensable
force in the Negro's pursuit of human rights." Measuring the medium's
impact, Gould thought, was "hardly possible," but it did have
remarkable ability to "personalize the Negro appeal" and to
reach into individual American homes. The problem, Gould wondered, was
whether television was essentially escapist or whether news could stimulate
Americans to act differently. Television was in some respects exactly
what the civil rights leaders needed. They had talked to the converted
and they had talked to the irreconcilable, but it was the vast mass of
Americans who either had no opinion of the matter or did not yet care
that they needed to reach. Gould called them "the throngs that attended
the adventures of 'the Beverly Hillbillies.'" Gould worried whether
television news could sustain American interest in the spectacle of civil
rights demonstrations and advocacy. Television viewers wanted fresh faces
and new acts, and Gould thought that the political and protest scene might
not be able to deliver them. If it could not, he feared viewers would
tune out. That television news coverage would get Americans off of the
couch and into the streets was unlikely, but it might reveal stories and
perspectives most Americans had never before seen or heard.
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The March on Washington was something to be seen not
read about. It barely registered in the Roanoke newspapers. A cartoon
in the August 27th
Roanoke World News depicted marchers with
placards headed toward a big barrel labeled "Washington, D.C."
with the title "Powder Keg" above it. A handful of articles
described the march in sketchy detail, and much of the commentary considered
it ineffective because it "did not change a vote" in Congress
on the Civil Rights Bill. Nearly all of the Virginia Congressional delegation
told reporters that they did not see or watch the march, and they had
little reaction to it. Democratic Congressman J. Vaughan Gary, however,
watched the march on TV and "was astonished, certainly, by the size
of the crowd." Congressman Thomas N. Downing also watched it, saying
"it was orderly, well done, and well coordinated. It gave those participating
an excellent opportunity to voice their opinion." Gary, in an attempt
to dismiss the march, said it struck him "as a giant pep rally."
Gary and Downing, and all who had seen the march on television, were trying
to categorize the visual experience. Only those who had seen it could
even attempt to do so, and millions had watched this national event on
local stations across the nation. What they saw and experienced as viewers
contrasted sharply with what they read about it in their newspapers.
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Published: 03 November 2004
© 2004 William G. Thomas III and
Southern
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