A History of the American Civil Rights Movement Through Newspaper Coverage

"In his first of two volumes ... Hallock gathers a treasure-trove of primary sources from a dozen daily newspapers across the country. Through close analysis of news accounts, story placement, headlines, photos, and editorials, Hallock reveals in granular detail how the nation's mainstream press set the agenda, framed the debate, and both molded and reflected 'social, cultural, and political opinion' during key moments in civil rights era." —Sid Bedingfield, Journalism History 45(3), September 2019
“A valuable, important, and searching analysis of press coverage and commentary during the civil rights years in America.” —Gene Roberts, co-author of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation
“Scholars and journalists have produced books, articles, and documentaries about certain aspects of the civil rights movement, but, until now, only Gene Roberts’s and Hank Klibanoff’s The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation offered a comprehensive analysis of how media coverage shaped public perceptions throughout the modern civil rights movement. Steve Hallock extends their study, both through selection of sources and emphasis on regional influences on coverage. Skillfully employing textual analysis, Hallock’s work gives us a greater understanding of how regional loyalties and racial motives shaped the coverage of the modern civil rights movement. Hallock shows how media outlets framed events in the movement and used that framing to set agendas in response to these events. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the media’s role in driving agendas and shaping public opinions during the modern civil rights movement.” —Darryl Mace, Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of History and Political Science at Cabrini College and author of In Remembrance of Emmett Till: Regional Stories and Media Responses to the Black Freedom Struggle
“'Words do matter,’ Steve Hallock declares, and the words in this powerful volume recapture the tense moments of the civil rights era through the newspapers of the day. The lessons learned here apply to our own troubled time.” —Jonathan Bean, Professor of History at Southern Illinois University, author of Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader, and an advisory member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission
“Steve Hallock offers an in depth treatment of the national press coverage of the civil rights movement and how it shaped our understanding of the world and the people in it. The book is a sobering and powerful account—a must read. And, in a moment where Americans find themselves drowning in a sea of non-stop media coverage and facing a president who declares, without any hint of irony, that the media is ‘an enemy of the state,’ it is critical that we understand the importance of news coverage in framing how we see the world and its problems and how it helps set the agenda for what we must do next.” —Eddie Glaude, Chair of the Center for African American Studies and the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University and author of Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul
“A History of the American Civil Rights Movement Through Newspaper Coverage: The Race Agenda (Volume 1) picks up where The Race Beat stopped. It is an excellent addition to the literature of media coverage of civil rights, providing depth and breadth to the question: what did the press report and when did they report it?” —Kathleen Wickham, Professor of Journalism at the University of Mississippi and author of We Believed We Were Immortal: Twelve Reporters Who Covered the 1962 Integration Crisis at Ole Miss