Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best-selling author David Halberstam was killed in a car accident Monday afternoon. Last semester, I wrote a research paper about his coverage of the sit-ins in Nashville, Tenn., in the 1960s. He was an extremely intelligent and kind man who personally helped me with my paper. I had the honor of interviewing him over the phone last November. Below is an excerpt from my paper. All quotes from him were said in the interview I conducted with him.
David Halberstam is not capable of choosing which one he is more proud of-and he’s not referring to his children. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War, but he still holds a very special place in his heart for the few months he spent covering the Nashville sit-ins for the Nashville Tennessean. When I asked Halberstam during a phone interview how he felt about the success of his coverage of the two events, he said, “That’s like asking someone which of their children they like best! There is no comparison. I’m very proud of what I did in Vietnam, but also what I did as a young reporter in the sit-ins. I was ready to do it. I was proud of my reporting. I feel very proud of both.”
Halberstam was born April 10, 1934, in the Bronx to an upper middle class white family. His father was a surgeon and his mother was a teacher. According to Halberstam, his family lived in “lots of different places” growing up, but he attended school in Milltown, Conn.
Halberstam graduated from Harvard University in 1955 with a degree in journalism. While at Harvard, he served as the managing editor for The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s daily student-run publication.
Halberstam said that he had always wanted to do journalism before he majored in it. “I wasn’t a good student, but I was naturally gifted at [journalism]. I learn in an auditory way, not the classic way from books. It was something I was good at, and as I was good at it, I liked doing it, so I worked harder and did better. I was very lucky to find something that I was equally good at and passionate about.”
Upon graduation from Harvard, Halberstam began work as a reporter for The Daily Times Leader in West Point, Miss. In the late 1950s, he started writing for The Nashville Tennessean where he covered the Civil Rights Movement, mostly the lunch counter sit-ins in 1960. Halberstam said that he does not know why the Tennessean picked him to cover the sit-ins, but whatever the reason, it worked out beautifully.
“Maybe [they chose me] because I was young. The interesting thing is that the kids were very comfortable with me. I didn’t play any tricks on them. I was the first white person any of them had ever dealt with in an ongoing relationship. I talked to them about themselves as if they were real citizens doing real things.”
After he left Nashville, he went to work for The New York Times, where his coverage of the Vietnam War won him a Pulitzer Prize at the ripe age of 30. Halberstam went on to publish a book about the Vietnam War titled “The Best and the Brightest.”
Halberstam was only 25 years old when he covered the sit-ins, and he feels that reporting about them caused him to muster up the same amount of courage that the demonstrators did. “One of the things I had to learn when I was first in the South is that I had to summon some degree of courage. I always thought of myself as somewhat cowardly. I had artificial courage. These students were willing to risk their lives, and I had been so comfortably and significantly more advantaged. Who was I not to take risks? Those lessons affected me later in Vietnam and the Congo.”
Working for a smaller paper and covering the sit-ins shaped Halberstam’s journalistic style.
“Any reporter is very lucky to get a story like that. It’s an extraordinary story. A greater part of my education came in the city room at the Nashville Tennessean. I learned more there than in my years at Harvard working for the Crimson.”
Halberstam realized his role in the sit-ins early in the movement. He understood that, “the students regarded media coverage as very important and took it into consideration in the planning and conduct of the sit-ins.” His coverage was overwhelmingly fair because he interviewed both officials and the students. He also did not rely on one primary source, so his coverage was well-rounded.
In his articles, Halberstam paints a vivid picture for the reader, almost in a play-by-play fashion. Ernie Pyle would have been proud. For example, in Halberstam’s first published article about the sit-ins on March 1, 1960, his lead grabs the reader’s attention immediately: “The fifth avenue North area was tense yesterday-threatened by racial conflict.”
The page one article goes on to describe the scene on Fifth Avenue: “It was tense with the patrolling of police, tense with the movements of small groups of whites, tense with rumors of what the Negro students planned. Everybody was ready for trouble.” Almost 50 years later, someone reading his articles can feel as if they are witnessing it for themselves.
He said that he was able to write stories in a balanced way because he was the same age as the student demonstrators. “They were surprised to get such fair coverage in a paper like that. I was open-minded to them; they thought of me as sympathetic. I enjoyed being with them. I reported what they did, and they could trust me.”
Halberstam knew what he was doing at the time was special. “I thought this was an extraordinary event,” he said in the closing thoughts of our interview. “I had a sense that I was an eyewitness to history.”