Earl Caldwell

His love for journalism began at his hometown paper

• Leandra Abbott
• Lenore Allen
• Ed Bradley
• Audreen Buffalo
• Earl Caldwell
• Marquita Pool-Eckert
• Joy Elliott
• Gerald Fraser
• Charlayne Hunter-Gault
• George Goodman
• Charles Hobson
• Jane Irving
• Claude Lewis
• Nancy Maynard
• Gil Scott
• Wallace Terry
• Melba Tolliver
• Mel Watkins
• Hollie West

As a college student Earl Caldwell believed his fate lay in the insurance business. He entered the University of Buffalo as a business major and in his second year he was offered a summer internship with a Philadelphia insurance company. When he went to the office they told him because he was black that he'd have to work in the south. And by the way, they added, no insurance company outside of the south would ever hire him, even as a professional.

Caldwell's ambition for insurance was sunk. "I was horrified of the South," Caldwell says.

Stunned by the scope of racism in the insurance business, Caldwell returned home to Clearfield, Pa. where he found his high school buddy, Frank Cardon working at the local paper, The Progress. Cardon, who was the sports editor, got Caldwell a job there reading proofs and assisting Cardon. He didn't make much money but he learned as many aspects of the paper as he could.

When Cardon left for a job at another paper, Caldwell applied for the sports editor position and got it. As a young man, getting a full-fledged job as the sports editor was as far as he could see his career going. He never imagined how far journalism would take him.

Caldwell found a mentor in Progress editor George Scott, who encouraged the young man to move up the chain of newspapers. Scott helped him get a job at the Intelligencer-Journal in Lancaster, Pa. in 1959. There, Caldwell served as a sports writer, the first African American in the paper's newsroom. He almost didn't get the job because the Intelligencer-Journal editors weren't sure their policy allowed them to hire blacks.

A few years later when Caldwell tried to move on to another paper, he got his first whiff of discrimination in the business. He interviewed for a job at the newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa., the state capitol. The editor said he would hire him. Caldwell, excited about his new job, hurried back to his Intelligencer-Journal editor and told him he was resigning. Weeks passed and Caldwell never heard from the Harrisburg editor again. Fortunately for Caldwell, his editor allowed him to rescind his resignation.

Convinced that he would likely spend the rest of his career at the Intelligencer-Journal, Caldwell decided there would be greater opportunity outside of covering sports, and began covering news in metro, government, planning and crime. As the civil rights movement took hold and protests decrying discrimination grew numerous, Caldwell began to notice that race was becoming a big issue.

Soon he would become witness to some of the most shattering events of the last 50 years as America moved through the storm of social transformation.