Dorothy Butler Gilliam, whose fifty-year-career as a journalist put her in the forefront of the fight for social justice, offers a comprehensive view of racial relations and the media in the US, covering a wide swath of media history--from the era of game-changing Negro newspapers like the Chicago Defender to the civil rights movement, feminism, and our current imperfect diversity.

"A powerful behind-the-scenes memoir from the first female African American reporter at The Washington Post. Gilliam recounts her full, fascinating life--spanning from the 1930s to the present. With a newspaper writer's resourcefulness, wit, and skill, this high-octane octogenarian weaves her personal and professional experiences together with six decades of media history witnessed firsthand. She recounts seizing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities never before possible for a "dark-skinned woman." Having grown up in the segregated South, she fondly describes the black church community that nurtured her self-image, steeling her against childhood and adolescent hardships and preparing her for unimagined ones to come. As we follow Gilliam's distinguished sixty-year career, we glimpse how the media has changed. As we read her first stories as a reporter for The Post, we learn she was told to enter by the back door when she arrived for interview assignments. During her coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, even her Washington Post expense account could not get her a hotel room while she was on assignment in Mississippi. Excerpts of her poignant columns chronicle the times when mainstream media first began to cover black culture. We are confidantes to the struggles of a black journalist breaking ground in a white world, while juggling her role as a wife and working mother, coming into her own during the Black Power and Women's Movements. Gilliam's life offers piercing insights into the role of the media in these movements. Having worked for diversity in the media, witnessed immense progress, and also overcome heart-wrenching setbacks, Gilliam gives voice to the change still needed to make the media more inclusive of all Americans."--Dust jacket.