Chapter 16: The Grandassa Models

At the Herald Tribune, editors were in a quandary. Claude Lewis, who had been recruited from Newsweek, left the paper for a job at the Philadelphia Bulletin. Claude had been the reporter that the Trib had counted on in covering the exploding story of race. Now, the editors wanted a reporter to literally camp out in Harlem and the other "Negro" areas of the city to report and write of what was taking place. A white reporter could not do that. The only reporter on the staff who wasn't white was Mylus Martin. And he flat-out refused to cover the story.

"That's not what I do," he argued. He said that he was trained in music and that his skill was covering the arts. That was the story he came to the Herald Tribune to write, Mylus said. "Send somebody else up to Harlem."

Mylus' steadfastness brought the call that I had been awaiting in Rochester.

"Do you have a problem covering that story?" asked David Laventhol, the city editor.

"Of course not," I told him.

And that was it. It was winter 1966, and the story that Mylus Martin did not want became the one I could not get enough of. It was more than just a big story. A massive redefinition of self was taking place in the ghettos. Very little went unchallenged. And at the core was an unprecedented embracing of blackness.

Everything that was black was grabbed on to. "Black is beautiful." And "I'm black and I'm proud." It was black Africa, black America, black studies, black teachers, black lawyers, black cops and black children. A whole world exploded around blackness.

Everything turned upside down. It was a revolution. As reporters, we were on the inside, watching all this and telling of it as it happened. But even we were not set apart. A name was hung on us too. "The black reporters from the white press," we were called. Black reporters: The name came from the streets in 1966.

No one could remain neutral. If you said, "I like the word Negro -- call me a Negro," you got put in a category. If you said, "I'm black -- call me black," that got you slotted another way. Everybody and everything was on trial.

You could greet a passerby, "Good morning." The answer might very well be "Black power." The "black thing" came at you from a whole lot of different directions.

It was an idea whose time had come. For generations, people in these communities had been arguing and brawling and, indeed, sometimes killing over blackness. To call somebody black was an act of aggression. "He's too black," mothers told their daughters. "How could you date a woman that black," men chided one another. The battles around skin color suddenly turned inside out. "Black is beautiful. I'm black and I'm proud."

And it wasn't just about skin color. This came home to me with a bang when, covering my Harlem beat, I met two brothers, Elombe and Kwame Brath. The Braths had been putting on the "Naturally" shows for years -- focusing on hair and dress fashions -- without many people noticing. Still they kept going. But this was 1966 and the times were changing. "Naturally 1966" caused a sensation. The shows featured women who were called the Grandassa models (after Grandassaland, the name that African nationalist leader Carlos Cooks applied to Africa). They were very dark complected. And, in place of the popular processed hairdo involving hot combs, which literally burned hair straight, they wore "naturals," later called Afros, which meant hair groomed and worn naturally.

To see the Grandassa models for the first time was stunning. They were so dark their faces had a bluish shimmer. "Blue black," people said. You saw them and your mouth just fell open. The "Naturally" shows drew large, enthusiastic crowds. "People were ready," Elombe Brath recalls. "The time was right." And it was. A lot of women took to the natural look. And nobody was neutral. You liked it or you didn't.

For us reporters, the "race story" was not simply about riots. It was far more compelling than that, far more socially significant. We were, we realized, at the eye of a profound social shift.

Our growing colony in New York City changed, too, and in a significant way. We were not all male anymore. Ruth Ross broke through at Newsweek. She had started out as a researcher in 1964. In 1966, with the race story as important as any other, she became the first woman to join our contingent as a reporter on the streets.

And there was something else: We never imagined the trouble it would cause some of us, but a lot of black reporters also put away the hot combs, the Dixie Peach, the Murray's hair dressing, and the stocking caps and showed up for work sporting Afro hair styles. In more than a few newsrooms, all hell broke loose.

At a television station where she was a reporter, Melba Tolliver was told that she could not go on the air unless she first put on a wig, scarf or something to cover her Afro. She refused. The station backed down only after word of the "hair affair" leaked out to a local tabloid. Fearing bad publicity, the station rushed Tolliver back on the air. But the station did not back down until a black protest was mounted. At some other news outlets, black reporters had editors order them to "go get a hair cut." It was not possible for me to separate myself entirely from the movement that I'd been thrust into as a reporter. The "roots" that were being examined were mine too. And the activists pushing this change were young, many of them about my age. I gravitated to their arguments. "I'm black and I'm proud" made me feel good, too. As they derisively attacked the term Negro ("knee-grow") as something from cotton patches and plantations, their words rang true. I was ready to shake Negro off too. Black made sense. It linked black America to black Africa. I wanted to be called black. I got rid of hair grease and stocking caps. I let my hair grow natural. The Afro I cultivated was modest. But that was the way I wanted it. I could connect with the movement on the streets and, as a reporter, still be considered promising by my white editors at the newspaper. Perhaps they understood.