CHICAGO– One day later Donald Trump’s controversial interview At the National Association of Black Journalists conference, the organization continued its work as usual.
Thousands of journalists spoke to recruiters or networked at the career fair. Conference rooms were filled with attendees listening to panel discussions on career growth and industry changes, including discussions on artificial intelligence and new considerations in criminal justice reporting.
Many walked past the people at the Dow Jones office to congratulate their colleague from the Wall Street Journal The Release of Evan Gershkovich from prison in Russia after a large-scale prisoner exchange.
But members of the nation’s largest group of black journalists were still grappling with the tension created by Trump’s interview on Wednesday, in which he made false claims about Vice President Kamala Harris’ race and repeatedly insulted ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott after she asked him an awkward question about his past attacks on black people.
Fred Sweets, an editor at The St. Louis American and a former Associated Press photographer, said Thursday that the interview with the Republican ex-president raised an age-old question for the group’s members: “Are we black first, or are we journalists?”
“He made the news, but that goes both ways,” said Sweets, 76, who attended the first meetings to found NABJ half a century ago. “He sank his ship as far as I could see. But to his followers, he was a hero.”
Sweets said he would have liked to hear questions about Trump’s interpretation of the amendments passed after the Civil War because he “seems to believe in the Constitution.”
He also allegedly asked about the Central Park Five, black and Hispanic men wrongly convicted in the beating and rape of a white female jogger. Trump placed an ad in a New York City newspaper after the 1989 attack calling for their executions. They were later acquitted.
The Appearance of the 2024 Republican Presidential Candidate NABJ was in an uproar when it was announcedin which a prominent journalist, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, resigned as co-chair of the conference in protest.
Harris, the first Black woman and person of Asian descent to become vice president, was not present. She is expected to appear in person or virtually at an NABJ event later this year.
Christian De’Vine, a University of Missouri-Columbia student and first-time NABJ attendee, said he felt like Trump wasn’t at the convention for the black media representatives in the room, but for his own public relations.
“While the interview may have upset some, it doesn’t change what we’re here for. We’re fostering a community of Black excellence,” De’Vine said, reiterating NABJ’s longstanding mission to strengthen connections among Black media professionals, including journalists, and celebrate the industry’s contributions and achievements.
DeWayne Wickham, a retired USA Today columnist, said Trump had lost the spotlight in the past two weeks. “So what better way to get it back than to go to the National Association of Black Journalists and stand on stage in front of 4,000 assembled black journalists and insult them and black America?”
“I think Donald Trump came here with no intention of talking to Black America. I think he saw this as an opportunity to galvanize his base,” said Wickham, 78, who is a founding member of the organization and former founding dean of the School of Global Journalism & Communications at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
The NABJ was founded in 1975, in part because media outlets began hiring black journalists following the 1968 Kerner Commission report, which argued that the media’s neglect of communities of color and the lack of diversity in the field contributed to the unrest of the time, Wickham said.
In 1975, the few black journalists who had been hired were often isolated in their offices and decided to band together “out of necessity for survival,” he said. The result was an organization where black journalists could mentor one another, share ideas and safely talk about issues they faced in their newsrooms as well as the topics they covered.
The association began inviting presidential candidates in 1976, Wickham said. Former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush have attended the convention as president or candidate. Candidate Bob Dole and his running mate, Jack Kemp, both attended the 1996 convention.
Marcus Craig, a 16-year-old high school journalist from Washington, D.C., said he attended his first convention to network.
“Of course we should give presidential candidates the opportunity to come and be investigated, because that is not only an opportunity for the journalists, but also for the candidates themselves to explain themselves and why we should vote for or against them,” he said.
Craig added that Trump’s interview didn’t change the young journalist’s reason for attending the convention in Chicago. “I don’t think anyone who’s not actually at NABJ can affect the fact that it’s a safe place,” he said.
Past conventions have not been without controversial figures or comments. In 1986, then-Chicago Mayor Harold Washington spoke at the NABJ convention in Miami about the lack of diversity and its impact on storytelling that reflected the realities of cities and communities of color.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan made more pointed comments on the subject at the 1996 NABJ convention in Nashville, Tennessee, when he said that journalists had no control over stories in the white-owned media outlets where many of them worked. Farrakhan has been accused by critics of promoting anti-Semitic tropes, a criticism he has disputed.
Wickham said that over the organization’s decades-long history, “the best and the brightest and sometimes the most controversial of Black America have shown up at our door. They want to come in. They want to talk to us. They want to be heard.”
“Sometimes the crazy uncle comes down from the attic and adds to the mix,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it’s still family.”