Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist

Born and raised in the South during a time when racial segregation was the norm, former New York Times journalist John N. Herbers witnessed and covered landmark civil rights uprisings that rocked the country, the world and his own conscience. A leading civil rights journalist for more than a decade, Herbers wrote from behind the front lines, risking his own personal safety to bring awareness to the nation of the injustices and violence inflicted on African Americans.

On October 4, Herbers’ daughter, Washington journalist Anne Farris Rosen, discussed Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist, the book she co-wrote with her father. This memoir provides riveting details about watershed events in the civil rights movement — the execution of Willie McGee, murder trial of Emmett Till, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Birmingham church bombing, Freedom Summer murders in Mississippi and Selma riots – as well as Herbers’ encounters with both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Ku Klux Klan.

Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist was the closing program for the temporary exhibit 55 Years, an installation of magazine covers featuring President Kennedy from 1963 to 2018 that showcased how the memorialization of the President evolved over time. View this program on YouTube.