Essay: I Was Going to be a Timesman

By Theodore "Ted" Jones (view Biography)

I was a home-grown product of The New York Times. Despite what that came to mean, I say it still with the pride of accomplishment. As a black adolescent growing up in Harlem in the late forties I knew that I was going to be a reporter for The New York Times. There was no uncertainty about this, just determination to succeed by all means possible. And I did.

I went to work for The Times during my sophomore year at the City College of New York. The ad I answered was for a part-time messenger in the production department. I walked the streets of downtown Manhattan picking up advertising copy from department stores and advertising firms.

I also found part-time work with The New York Amsterdam News, the major black weekly in the city. The editor, James Hicks, always demanding my best, became my sounding board, tutor, and friend. He liked the idea of a column on college fraternities and sororities. "It's Greek To Me" was successful, and the messenger became a very popular man about town.

Graduation came in June, 1955, and eight months later I was taking basic officers' training at Fort Benning, Georgia. I served six months on active duty and became an Army reservist for life. I returned to civilian life and my messenger job at The Times, which was not really expecting me back.

Surreptitiously, I let it be known that a black college graduate and Army officer was picking up advertising copy, and the outdoor messenger became an indoor office boy, moving mail and packages in the publisher's office.

Several months later, near the end of 1957, an assistant managing editor was interviewing me for a copyboy position in the newsroom of The Times.

It was an unforgettable interview. I sat there and heard the history of blacks in the editorial department of The New York Times. It was a short history on three individuals. An academic had been hired as a reporter, then fired. He didn't go into the night quietly. The lesson learned: if you hire them, don't let them be rowdy blacks. The other two apparently had passed the test. They were Layhmond Robinson, a reporter, and Robert Claybrooks, a news assistant on the City Desk. We became friends and a black triumvirate at The Times.

I was a copyboy for two years. During that time, I attended the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and received a master's degree in 1959. At The Times, the climb upward took me through the following positions: news clerk, news assistant, picture desk clerk, picture desk news assistant, and radio scriptwriter (WQXR). I became a general assignment reporter in February, 1961.

I left The Times in December, 1965, having decided that there was little chance of becoming anything more than a black reporter covering black-oriented events for the newspaper.

I had paid my dues. I covered the police beats with the Tabloid bigots and worked on the city-state beat covering various agencies. I tracked the civil fights and school demonstrations in the city, did riot duty in Harlem, kept in contact with Malcolm X, and covered Pope Paul VI's visit to Harlem.

But the national assignments were few, a riot here, a riot there. I couldn't go South where the fights for civil rights were the story. Instead, I stayed at home helping white reporters become experts on the civil rights beat. Even the possibility of joining the Albany (NY) bureau to cover state politics was denied. So, after 12 years of acquiescence and determination, I said good-bye and left The Times, at that moment, without a black reporter on staff.