American journalism

582 Pages·1997·17.9 MB·English

by  American Journalism Historians Association

AMERICAN
JOURNALISM
IN THIS ISSUE:
•Promoting the Progressive Indian: Lee Harkins and The
American Indian Magazine
•James Lawrence Fly's Fight For a Free Marketplace of
Ideas
•Caro Brown and the Duke ofDuval: The Story ofthe
First Woman to Win the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting
•The Founding ofInvestigative Reporters and Editors,
Inc. and the Arizona Project: The Most Significant Post-
Watergate Development in U.S. Investigative Journalism
•Foreign Embassies in the United States as Communist
Propaganda Sources: 1945-1960
Volume 14 Number 1 Winter 1997
Publishedby
TheAmericanJournalism Historians Association
American Journalism
Volume 14 Number Winter 1997
1
Published by
The American Journalism Historians Association
©
Copyright 1997
American Journalism Historians Association
EDITOR: Wallace B. Eberhard, Georgia. ASSOCIATE EDITORS:
Pamela A. Brown, Rider; Richard Lentz, ArizonaState; Patricia Bradley,
Temple. BOOK REVIEW EDITOR: David Spencer, University of
Western Ontario ADVERTISING MANAGER: Alan R. Fried,
University of South Carolina. ASSISTANT EDITOR: Amy Fuller,
Georgia. FORMER EDITORS: William David Sloan, Alabama; Gary
Whitby, EastTexas State; John Pauly, SaintLouis.
EDITORIAL PURPOSE. The journal publishes articles, research
notes, book reviews, and correspondence dealing with the history of
journalism. Such contributions may focus on social, economic,
intellectual, political, or legal issues. American Journalism also
welcomes articles that treat the history ofcommunication in general; the
history ofbroadcasting, advertising, and public relations; the history of
media outside the United States; and theoretical issues in the literature or
methods ofmedia history.
SUBMISSIONS.Articles, research notes,and correspondence should be
sent to ProfessorWallace B. Eberhard, Editor, College ofJournalism and
Mass Communication, University of Georgia, Athens 30602-3018.
Telephone: [phone]. FAX: [phone]. E-mail:
[email protected]. Authors should send five copies of
manuscripts submitted for publication as articles. American Journalism
follows the style requirements ofthe Chicago Manual ofStyle, 14th ed.
The maximum length for most manuscripts is twenty-five pages, not
including tables and footnotes.
All submissions are blind refereed by threereaders. The review process
typically takes about three months. Manuscripts will be returned only if
the author includes aself-addressed stampedenvelope.
Research notes typically are four- to eight-page manuscripts, written
with less formal documentation. Such notes, which are not blind
refereed, may include reports of research in progress, discussion of
methodology, annotations on new archival sources, commentaries on
issues injournalism history, suggestions for future research, or response
to material previously published in American Journalism. Authors who
wish tocontribute research notes are invited toquery theeditor.
(Continuedoninsidebackcover)
American Journalism / Volume 14 Number 1 / Winter 1997
Volume 14
Number
1
Winter 1997
A M R C.\\ In This Issue:
I- 1
JOURNALISM
• From the Editor's Desk 2
• Articles
:
John M. Coward:
Promoting the Progressive Indian:
Lee Harkins and The American Indian Magazine 3
Mickie Edwardson:
James Lawrence Fly's Fight for aFree
Marketplace of Ideas 19
Robert Jones and Louis K. Falk:
Caro Brown andthe Duke ofDuval:
The Story ofthe FirstWoman to Win the
Pulitzer Prize for Reporting 40
Maria Marron:
The Founding ofInvestigative Reporters and
Editors, Inc. and the Arizona Project: The Most
Significant Post-Watergate Development in U.S.
Investigative Journalism 54
Alex Nagy:
Foreign Embassies in the United States
as Communist Propaganda Sources: 1945-1960 76
• Essay Review:
Rodger Streitmatter:
Journalism History Goes Interactive at the Newseum 92
• Research Essay:
John D. Stevens:
The Black Press and the 1936 Olympics 97
American Journalism / Volume 14 Number 1 / Winter 1997
1996 Presidential Address:
Thomas H. Heuterman:
AJHA and Its Responsibility to the Future
of Journalism 103
Book Reviews: Index 109
From
the Editor's Desk...
THE MAIL BRINGS US a petition seeking support. As prose, it's a bit long,
buttheheadingtells thetale: "Torequirepurchaseofresearchbooks andjournals
by libraries in universities receiving federal research funds." For those ofus in
the academic trade, it seems a no brainer, though that's a dangerous assumption
in this instance. The supporting information tells us that spending by Research
I category universities has declined as a percentage of total spending while
administrative expenditures haveedged upward. Meanwhile, the adventofnew
information technology has not been fully realized because offailure to provide
adequate resources, i.e., money. Noproblem so far. Unfortunately, this petition
won't get our John Hancock unless they ch—ange the language emphasizing
"scienceresearch"tomoreinclusivelanguage humanistic andyes, grudgingly
perhaps, even social scienceresearch. No offense, biologists andphysicists, but
whatgood is yourstuffwithoutours?
&etc&etc&etc&etc&etc
A tip of the green eyeshade to Professor Rodger Streitmatter of American
University, an AJ contributor and reviewer and longtime AJHA member who
took on the assignment of reviewing the new Freedom Forum Newseum in
Arlington, Va., for ourreaders. It gives us akind ofnewsroom deadline rush to
hold thepresses a day ortwo more and include his view of$50 million spent in
the name of media history. This is a wild guess, but we doubt that the total
spent thus far in the United States in public interpretation and preservation of
mass communication history exceeds that amount. And, do we as media
historians even have an inventory, list, or traveler's guide to places that do in
even amodestway whatthe—Newseumdoeson agrandscale? —
We hope someday soon as most of our readers probably do to stroll
through the Newseum to get ourown sense ofthe project. In any event, a wave
of the eyeshade and three cheers to the Freedom Forum for this substantial
investment in interpreting the media's past to the museum goers ofthe nation's
capital.
WBE
American Journalism / Volume 14 Number 1 / Winter 1997
Promoting the Progressive
Indian: Lee Harkins and
The American Indian Magazine
By John M. Coward
LeeHarkinsfoundedTheAmerican Indian topromoteaprogressiveNative
American identity in Oklahomafrom 1926 to 1931. Harkins, a Choctaw-
Chickasawman, definednativeprogress throughanidealizedIndianpast;
paternalismtowardtraditionalIndians;pan-Indianism;andIndianmainstreaming
into thedominantculture ofeducation, business, politicsandsociety. Buthe
failedtosee thenegativesideofassimilationandTheAmerican Indian ignored
the long-standingsocialandculturalproblemsoftraditionalIndians.
The first page ofthe first issue of The American Indian in October 1926
included aphotographic portraitofoneman, formally posed in achairand
adorned in his finest ceremonial dress. The man was ChiefBacon Rind,
an Oklahoma Indian described on the magazine's coveras a "Nationally Known
Osage Indian Character and Orator." As explained inside the magazine, the
seventy-two-year-old chief was "perhaps the most picturesque Indian in the
United States" and a skillful orator in his native tongue. Editor Lee Harkins, a
young Oklahoma Choctaw-Chickasaw man who had a number of Osage
supporters, seemed to view Bacon Rind as a link between the old ways ofthe
native past and a fully assimilated, white-dominated future. Harkins wrote that
Bacon Rind "remembers very vividly when they barely eked [sic] out a living in
the Osage hills and streams." But, as Harkins made clear, progress in the form
of"white man's culture" had come to the Indians ofOklahoma. "It has brought
about a wonderful change in the last few years and is essential for the younger
generation ofIndians," Bacon Rind told the youngeditor.1 Thus Harkins, outto
1. The American Indian, October 1926, 5.
4 Coward: Harkins and The American Indian
make his mark in Native Americanjournalism, found an appropriate symbol for
his progressive ideas in the image ofan aging Osagechief. Here was aman who
embodied both pride in the past and a progressive spirit ofthe future, two ideas
thatmotivated Harkins anddominated thepages ofTheAmerican Indian.
This article assesses Lee Harkins' role and his important but often
overlooked monthly magazine, The American Indian, in the promotion of a
progressive, thoroughly assimilated Indian identity forNative Americans during
the early twentieth century.2 Published from 1926 to 1931, The American
Indian was devoted to a "modern" view ofAmerican Indians and was part ofthe
increasingly controversial assimilationist movement that sought to push Indians
from theirtraditional tribal ways towardmainstream social and economic values.
The research situates Harkins and his publication within the complex and
peculiar history of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory and their
changing status under federal Indian policy. The article describes and critiques
the key elements ofthe progressive Indian identity, advocated in The American
Indian and contrasts Harkins' editorial themes to competing ideas about Indian
identity in the early twentieth century.
Oklahoma Indians and the Problem of Progress
Thedevelopmentofaprogressive Indian identity in Oklahomagrew out
of a host of political and economic changes extending over several decades.
Perhaps the two most important changes were the result of the General
Allotment Act of 1887 and Oklahoma statehood in 1907. The General
Allotment Act, known as the Dawes Act after Massachusetts Senator Henry
Dawes, was part ofa national Indian reform movement intended to help native
peoplebecome assimilated, productiveparticipants in the dominant society. The
main mechanism for achieving this goal was the allotment of tribal lands to
individual Indians, aprocessmeanttoreducetribal influenceandfostereconomic
self-sufficiency. As landowning farmers, Indians were supposed to learn good
workhabits and become enterprising, educated, fully assimilatedU.S. citizens.3
2. TheAmerican Indian is not mentioned in James E. Murphy and Sharon M. Murphy,
Let My People Know: American Indian Journalism, 1828-1978 (Norman: University
ofOklahoma Press, 1981). Also, Harkins' magazine should not be confused with The
American Indian Magazine, a quarterly published by the Society ofAmerican Indians
in Washington, D.C., from 1916-1920. A short history of that publication is in
Daniel F. Littlefield Jr. and James W. Parins, American Indian and Alaska Native
Newspapers and Periodicals, 1826-1924, vol. 1 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press,
1984), 10-19.
3. The Dawes Act provided a 160-acre allotment to each Indian head of household
living on reservation land. The act also conferred citizenship, including the right to
vote, on Indian landowners and on those Indians living apart from the tribe and
having "adopted the habits of civilized life." Only in 1924 was citizenship extended
to all Indians born in the territorial limits of the United States. Although the Five
Civilized Tribes were exempt from the original Dawes Act, legislation in the 1890s
forced the allotment oftheir tribal lands. See Hazel W. Hertzberg, The Searchforan
American Journalism / Volume 14 Number 1 / Winter 1997 5
Unfortunately for the Indians, the Dawes Act also allowed whites to
buy "surplus" tribal land. This provision significantly reduced Indian land
holdings in Oklahoma and across the nation. Moreover, white settlers and
speculators in Oklahoma found numerous illegal and unethical ways to skirt the
legal safeguards of the act and take control of individual allotments.4 As a
result, about twenty million acres ofeastern Oklahoma, land once owned by the
Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles, was stripped from
Indian control and many w—hites grew rich from the agric—ultural, timber, mining,
and oil rights obtained sometimes scandalously from Indian lands.
Withoutland ortheskills necessary formodern life, many OklahomaIndians fell
into poverty.5
Statehood further undermined tribal identity in Oklahoma. Although
the leaders oftheFive Civilized Tribes fought against statehood, the desire for
new land produced political pressure both within Indian Territory and in
Washington in favorofstatehood. Moreover, statehood led to the disbanding of
tribal governments, a move that left Oklahoma Indians without their traditional
form ofcultureandpower. The battles overallotmentandstatehood alsodivided
the five tribes. Themore assimilatedorprogressive natives, often mixed-bloods,
generally favored the changes; conservatives or traditional Indians, often
fullbloods, resisted them.6 Although the progressives rationalized their actions
by citing the inevitability of progress, the results of these assimilationist
policies were not always as they anticipated. The loss of land and tribal
structures did not produce civilized farmers and model citizens; instead, it
produced aclass ofdispossessed natives, forced to surrendertheirown traditions
but unwilling or unable tojoin the dominant culture. "The Oklahoma Indian
was asked to sacrifice many ofthe best parts ofhis culture forthe worstparts of
the whiteculture," OklahomahistorianRennard Stricklandconcluded.7
Lee Harkins was heir to this complex political heritage. Bom in 1899
at Boggy Depot in the Choctaw Nation of Indian Territory, he was Choctaw-
American Indian Identity (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1971), 4-
9, and Robert W. Mardock, The Reformers and the American Indian (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1971), 218-21. Also see Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final
Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920 (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1984), 77-79.
4. A detailed and shameful chronicle of the "orgy of exploitation" of eastern
Oklahoma Indians is in Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1940). Also see Daniel F. Littlefield Jr. Alex Posey: Creek Poet,
Journalist, & Humorist (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 226-246.
5. Rennard Strickland, The Indians ofOklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1980), 36.
6. In And Still the Waters Run, 126-27, Debo points out that "adaptability was not
entirely a matter of blood, for some fullblood families had always been wealthy, nor
was it altogether a matter of intelligence or even of education. It seemed to be a
combination of native aptitude and business experience; those Indians, whether
fullbloods or mixed-bloods, who had cared to acquire property in the old days had
developed a knowledge of commercial transactions."
7. Strickland, 37.
6 Coward: Harkins and The American Indian
French on his father's side and Chickasaw on his mother's.8 Both sides ofhis
family were tribal leaders, and Harkins' great-great-grandfather, David Folsom,
served as an interpreter for the great Choctaw chief Pushmataha in the early
1800s. Harkins was proud of the fact that Folsom printed the first Choctaw
newspaper, the Telegraph, in Mississippi in 1848. Another relative, a great-
great uncle named George W. Harkins, was selected by Choctaw leaders to
explore Indian Territory in advance of the tribe's removal from Mississippi.
Harkins was immensely proud ofhis ancestors, afactthat influenced the kind of
Indian history he latercelebrated in hismagazine.
Significantly, Harkins was educated in non-Indian, public schools in
Oklahoma, attending Murray School of Agriculture and Sulphur High School.9
Hisjournalism career began at fifteen when he got ajob as a printer's devil at
the Coalgate Record-Register, a weekly he later edited. Harkins was a
journalism student at the University of Oklahoma from 1920-1923, editing an
Indian issue ofthe campus humormagazine. He worked briefly fortheNorman
Transcriptand as aprinter at the Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. In 1923,
Harkins left the university and took ajob in the composing room ofthe Tulsa
Tribune, whereheremainedtherestofhiscareer.
Harkins' white-oriented upbringing influenced his view ofthe modern
Indian. Unlike many Indians in western states, Harkins did not grow up in a
traditional native household on a reservation. Harkins' parents were largely
assimilated mixed-bloods and their son soon adopted mainstream ideas about
education, economic opportunity, and politics. These ideas made sense for
Harkins, a young man with roots deep in the "civilized" traditions of eastern
Oklahoma tribal life. For more traditional reservation Indians, however,
assimilation often meant a full-scale attack on their very culture. Native
traditions and languages were suppressed and Indian children were forcibly
removed from their families and sent to government boarding schools. "The
word assimilation was not an abstract, remote concept," one western historian
noted. "Rather, it was an active philosophy, with tremendous powertobreak up
families and even takethelives ofchildren."10
By the mid-1920s, the disastrous results of such assimilation policies
had produced a counter-trend among reservation Indians and their white
supporters. Led by activist and reformer John Collier, later Commissioner of
Indian Affairs under Franklin Roosevelt and architect ofthe Indian New Deal,
this movement sought "Indian rights in such matters as self-government,
8. Biographical information in this study was compiled from Muriel H. Wright, "Lee
F. Harkins, Choctaw," The Chronicles of Oklahoma 37, no. 3 (1959): 285-87, and
from personal papers in the Lee Harkins Collection at the Oklahoma Historical
Society in Oklahoma City, hereafter referred to as the OHS. These documents include
an undated Who's Who in the Western Hemisphere entry as well as a number of
newspaper and magazine articles by and about Harkins.
9. Who's Who, Harkins Collection, OHS. Wright says that Harkins graduated from
high school in Tishomingo.
10. Floyd A. O'Neil, "The Indian New Deal: An Overview," in Indian Self-Rule, ed.
Kenneth R. Philip(Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1986), 32.
American Journalism / Volume 14 Number 1 / Winter 1997 7
religion, and civil liberties and [it] advocated cultural pluralism, not
unconditional assimilation, as the proper objective of federal Indian policy."11
Collier, in fact, was instrumental in the funding American Indian Life, a native
journal established in 1925 by the American Indian Defense Association. Asthe
name suggests, this organization was vigorously opposed to the government's
assimilationist policies and American Indian Life reflected this more militant
position.12
Harkins and many other Indians in eastern Oklahoma were not part of
this movement. These Indians, mostly mixed-bloods, had long been
accommodationist toward white culture and they were convinced ofthe benefits
of this contact. Even as a young man, Harkins saw the Indian future in the
white world of education and business. A journalism assignment from his
college days illustrates Harkins' assimilationist philosophy. In a four-page
essay called "TheModern Indian," Harkins reviewed the history ofthe Choctaws
and Chickasaws in Mississippi and in Indian Territory. But the focus of the
article was on the progressive nature ofthe tribes, a progress achieved through
Indian-white "amalgamation." Thepast was dead and gone, Harkins made clear,
andanew worldofsuccess andprosperity awaited:
There are no flapping ofteepee doors, no cradle-boards rested
againstthe seasoned trees, no sound ofthe war-whoop, and no
more "stomp-dances" forthey have all passed outofexistence,
and instead, white man's ways and inventions have replaced
them.13
The article concluded by describing the contemporary Indian: "Today he is a
proud fatherandis eitheraprofessional man oramoder—n farmer." Moreover, his
children "can be found in all avocations or vocations from the southern farm
to the California stage and holding high government positions."14 At twenty-
four, five years before his magazine venture, Harkins was thoroughly
progressive, devotedtoanontraditional life in awhite-dominatedworld.
'A True Reservoir of Indian Life'
The American Indian was founded in October 1926 as a monthly
magazine. It was roughly the size and shape ofa tabloid newspaper (about ten
11. Littlefield and Parins, ed.,American Indian andAlaska Native Periodicals, 1925-
1970, vol. 2 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1986), xii. Collier's life and career as a
reformer and administrator is discussed Kenneth R. Philip, John Collier's Crusadefor
Indian Reform, 1920-1954 (Tuscon; University of Arizona Press, 1977) and The
Assault on Assimilation: John Collier and the Origins of Indian Policy Reform
(Albuquerque: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1983).
12. Ibid., 29.
13. "The Modern Indian," 21 May 1923, 3, typescript, box 2, Harkins Collection,
OHS.
14. Ibid., 4.
8 Coward: Harkins and The American Indian
by fourteen inches). Issues were twenty pages, including an impressive two-
color front cover. The magazine was the most important of several native
publications founded in the 1920s to advance Indian assimilation. One ofthese,
The OKeh, was published in Los Angeles by the American Indian Progressive
Association, a group whose stated purpose was "to encourage the progressive
development and education of the American Indians."15 Unfortunately The
OKeh, like many native publications, was short-lived. Harkins, by contrast,
published an attractive and well-edited magazine for more than four years, a
considerableachievement in the unstable world ofnativejournalism.
The American Indian's nameplate symbolized Harkins' view of the
Indian past and present. The left side showed an Indian encampment with three
teepees. Thecenterincludedabuffal—o in frontoftwoAmerican flags, attachedto
staffs topped with Indian artifacts one a tomahawk, the other a pipe. The
right side of the nameplate showed a photograph of downtown Tulsa, grandly
described by Harkins as "a panoramic view ofthe towering skyline ofTulsa."16
Since Harkins worked—downtown, it seems clearthat he saw the city as the place
forthe Indian present and future.
Harkins wantedhis magazine to be both asource ofnews and aplace to
celebrate the Indian past. In the first issue, Harkins wrote that the magazine
would be "devoted to the presentation of every day Indian news and the
preservation of Indian lore." He added, "The chief aim of this magazine is to
become a true reservoir ofIndian life and history based upon authentic articles
fromourIndian and white writers."17 This was adecidedly simple ideaofIndian
history, and arguably, one ofHarkins' most serious limitations as an editor.
Harkins' ideaofnews was conventional. He was primarily aboosterof
Indian progress and he usedthe newscolumns to praise native achievements and
to win friends and supporters. This explains why Harkins regularly published
photographs ofIndian children and was fond ofIndian "princess" photos on the
magazine's cover. Many other stories profiled native individuals who Harkins
wanted to recognize. In the November 1926 issue, for example, Harkins ran a
profile ofT.J. Leahy, alawyerforthe Osage tribe lawyerwho hadmarried into a
prominent Osage family. The same issue included a profile of Iva Thorpe,
widow ofthe great Sac andFox athlete, Jim Thorpe. Both stories were flattering
to their subjects. Harkins also opened the magazine to poetry and Indian
legends, publishing the contributions of a variety of Indian and non-Indian
writers.
From the start, Harkins aligned himself and his magazine with the
business community in Tulsa and northeast Oklahoma. This position
undoubtedly helped sell advertising, and the early issuesofTheAmericanIndian
15. Littlefield and Parins,American Indian andAlaska Native Periodicals, vol. 2, xii,
302. Another progressive publication mentioned by Littlefield and Parins was the
American Indian Bulletin founded in 1929 at Pipestone, Minnesota. Little is known
about the Bulletin and only a few issues were published. See Littlefield and Parins,
vol. 2, xii.
16. The American Indian, October 1926, 2.
17. Ibid., 4.