Voices Felecia Ross === [00:00:00] Felicia Ross: The Double V campaign said that, okay, you know, you want us to fight this war, overseas, but what are we fighting for? Are we going to appreciate the democracy at home that you're fighting for overseas, thus double V. Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics, and languages, among many others, the college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. David Staley: I'm pleased to be joined today by Felecia Ross, Associate Professor in the School of Communication at the Ohio State University, college of the Arts and Sciences. Her research has focused on the mass media and traditionally discriminated groups, especially [00:01:00] the history of the Black press. She was recently featured in the PBS American Experience Documentary _Bombshell_, which we're gonna learn more about this afternoon. Dr. Ross, welcome to Voices. Felicia Ross: Thank you. David Staley: Well, and as I said, your work focuses on the Black press, and maybe we should start there. When we say Black press, what, what is it that we're referring to? Felicia Ross: Well, we typically, refer to historically speaking Black newspapers, but then now that we have digital media, broadcasting outlets, then we broaden it to call Black media. Typically it is owned by Black people, but sometimes it is not owned by Black people, and then it becomes Black targeted media because they're targeting the Black audience. David Staley: Well, and I know your research is focused on the sorts of coverage that's found in Black media or black press and how that might differ from the, I dunno, the mainstream press. So to wit, you've recently written about [00:02:00] coverage in the Black media of the Navy pilot, Jesse Brown, who was killed when he was shot down during the Korean War. Tell us, tell us about this research. Felicia Ross: Well, this was inspired by the movie _Devotion_. David Staley: Oh, sure. Yes. Felicia Ross: That was published, I mean, that was released in 2022 and had a major star, Jonathan Majors very popular star at the time, played the role of Jesse Brown. And I watched the promotion of that movie and I said, Hey, what if, how did the Black press cover the experience of Jesse Brown and what had happened in that story, just for people to be familiar with, is that he was the first Black Navy officer, at least in that war, and he was a pilot, and Jesse Brown was shot down during, I guess a reconnaissance type of mission over North Korea and his wing man, a white guy, because he was, he was the only Black guy at [00:03:00] that level in the Navy. And so, he was the only Black officer, you know, in his troop or in his whatever you call it. And, the white guy, named Thomas Hudner was, I guess you call it a wing man. People have to help me with the military terminology. David Staley: Not certain I'm much help. Felicia Ross: But, he saw that he was shot down. Thomas Huttner violated regulations, flew down to try to rescue him, and those regulations was that if someone is shot down, you don't go after them because you're endangering yourself, right? So we'd rather be recovering one body instead of two or three bodies. But he violated regulations. I'm gonna try to free him 'cause he could see that he was still alive and he tried very hard to rescue him. He was pinned, jesse Brown was pinned in his wreckage, and so he couldn't do it by himself, did everything he could. So he flew back to get other people to help him. [00:04:00] They came back. Jesse Brown had died of his injuries. David Staley: Oh, okay. Felicia Ross: And as a result of his effort, Thomas Huttner earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. And so if you think about the timeline, the timeline was, it was December of 1950 when, you know, Jesse Brown died and the failed rescue attempt, and so by May of 1951, I think it was April or May of 1951, that's when Thomas Huttner earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. And this was a story not, really of how, this is my words, integration was supposed to work because as we may or may not know, it was a Korean war when you had racial desegregation in the military. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: And, Jesse Brown had a good experience, from what I could retell that from the book and from the movie. They, they treated him [00:05:00] well and Thomas Huttner was a good guy. He was devoted to, you know, doing the right thing, you know, so from what I could tell, race was not an issue. And so what I looked at was how the mainstream coverage compared with the Black coverage. And I kind of had expectations about that. And the expectations were that I know this is a big deal to have a Black guy become an officer. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: In the military, in the Navy. And so, I expect Black newspapers to cover every aspect of his experience from the time he went to flight school through his graduation from flight school and, and his becoming an officer. And that's what Black newspapers did. Every, he's gonna be flying jet's, gonna be flying gear, he's gonna be stationed there, pictures of him, you know, getting his wings and the like. And then when he flew his missions, have a picture of him on the flight deck, pictures of getting ready to go on his mission. [00:06:00] Oh, he did this great thing on his mission, he did that great thing, you know, that was all in the Black newspaper, front page. A lot of the mainstream papers that I looked at, not anything like that about him in there. You started seeing more about the Jesse Brown story at that time, we're talking about 1950, 1951, okay, that time period, when Huttner got the Congressional Medal of Honor. Then you started seeing it not much, maybe in the New York Times and other newspapers, mainstream newspapers, and maybe one or two newspapers might have indicated that Jesse Brown had died, had been shot down, and his hometown newspaper did give it a lot of coverage, did cover him his hometown, mainstream newspaper of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And so, what I was looking at as to, and I was trying to figure out why the coverage was so different. Why didn't, the white newspapers, not give coverage as much coverage to Jesse Brown ? [00:07:00] And even when Huttner got the Congressional Medal of Honor, there were some newspapers that just had Huttner picture of him winning the Congressional Medal of Honor but not a picture of Jesse Brown, this is the guy he saved. Some newspapers do that, and I'll have to say this, that one newspaper that handled it that way was a OSU student newspaper. David Staley: I was afraid you were gonna say that. Felicia Ross: I know. And, what surprised me, and this was not pointed out in the movie, and the movie is based on the book. David Staley: Right. Felicia Ross: With the same title called _Devotion_, of course I had to read the book to do good research on it. And it did mention Ohio State, that he was a student at Ohio State. I'm looking at this by looking at the cover. I said, Ohio State, what? He went to Ohio, I mean, I was, I was surprised. I was excited to do that. Yeah. I said, well, let's see what _The__ Lantern_ said about it. And I mentioned that, I want to know why that choice was [00:08:00] made and a lot of the pictures of Jesse Brown were furnished by the Navy. The Navy would send the photographs to different newspapers, and that's an area that I'm curious to see how they selected newspapers to send that. Because I know there are cases where the Office of War information during World War II selected certain things to go to Black newspapers that didn't go to the mainstream newspapers. So I'm, there's wonder if that's what was going on. That's the scenario that I'm still trying to figure out. David Staley: Say a little bit about your method, and this will apply for the other research examples that we'll talk about. What's the process of looking through or interpreting these newspapers? Felicia Ross: Okay. Well, one thing was helpful that I already had some experience on the other side Of, of working at news. So I had an idea of what they're gonna cover. David Staley: Oh, so you've been a journalist? Felicia Ross: Oh yes. I worked at a, I guess you wanna know that I worked at, the [00:09:00] Journaling Guide for two years, the newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia. David Staley: Oh, okay. Felicia Ross: And, when I was a kid, that was a paper that you would, it came out once a week and it was almost like a status symbol if your picture got into that newspaper because of some achievement that you've, earned that you've accomplished. And so, people would send in information or they would if someone was having a graduation party or maybe some church activity, they would ask a photographer to come from the Journaling Guide and take the picture. That was a big deal. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: You know, to take a picture and it would be a great picture you know, that's shown in the newspaper and have the names and all that, and everybody's proud to see that. I don't know if they did it as much as frame it, but we knew about that and so that's why I kind of knew that. I said, they're going to cover every little detail about his experience. And although they may have not sent a photographer because [00:10:00] maybe the photographer didn't have access to some of the bases where he would be, but they ate that up. So the method that I used was I would go to, you know, the online archives because now you know, a lot of that is. digitized. Maybe 20 years ago when I was researching Black newspapers, I would read it on microfilm, and then sometimes I would be lucky to get maybe the raw copy of it, and that's maybe if I go to a place such as the National Archives or the Library of Congress and have to look at the physical copies. But for the most part, it was either through microfilm or through digital databases. So I looked at the timeframe for the Jesse Brown story, I started 1948 to 1951. And, our library had archives, and we call it the ProQuest. David Staley: Yes. Felicia Ross: Database of historical [00:11:00] newspapers, and so I used America's historical newspapers. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: To pick up, the mainstream as well as the Black paper cover, Black newspaper coverage of that. So I used 1948 to 1952. Start with 1948 because that's when the troops were integrated, just to see if there was any context about what mainstream and Black newspapers said about troop integration, and then, of course 1952 to cover anything else that might have been said about Jesse Brown's experience and the congressional Medal of Honor. David Staley: So I introduced you as having been featured in the documentary _Bombshell_. Well, first of all, tell us what _Bombshell_ is and then what was your particular contribution to this documentary? Felicia Ross: Okay. _Bombshell_ is really about the atomic bomb, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and how the government covered up the radiation sicknesses that [00:12:00] resulted from the bomb. Now we all know now that it caused radiation sickness, cancer. David Staley: Like here, as we were testing it here, like in New Mexico or? Felicia Ross: When they, it was dropped in Hiroshima. David Staley: Oh. So when it was actually dropped in Japan, Felicia Ross: When was dropped into Japan. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But, but I'm just saying today I think the radiation effects are well known. But afterwards dropped, I'll say in the months and weeks after it was dropped, the government made a great effort to keep that from the public. They did not want to diminish the success that resulted from the atomic bomb because it ended World War II. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: And the government did not want to diminish the efforts of the military, you know, because they were dampering the glee that people were feeling after the war ended. And so, this documentary deals with the lengths that the government [00:13:00] took to cover that up and the complicity of some of the journalists David Staley: Uhhuh. Felicia Ross: In that cover up. But also a few of the journalists who didn't go along with that, they said, no, this is, you know, this is a problem. This is happening too. And my contributions was, one of those journalists who was from the Black press, his name was Charles Loeb. Charles Loeb was from the _Cleveland Call and Post,_ he was an editor, and was one of the many accredited Black correspondent covering the war, and he happened to be there, shortly after I'll say maybe a few weeks after the bomb was dropped. And he reported on the reactions of the members of the press who visited the bombed areas, he didn't himself visit those bombed areas, but he noted the reactions of [00:14:00] the Press Corps that came back. He said they were flabbergasted. Charles Loeb had a background in chemistry. In fact, he had gone to college to study medicine. David Staley: Hmm. Felicia Ross: And he didn't finish because of finances, and so he moved on into some other areas such including journalism. And so, he knew what he was seeing and he wrote the story the way scientists would write a story, very matter of fact. He kind of signaled that there were some problems and he used the fact that one of the members of the government was denying it. There's no radiation effects whatsoever, no more than what you would get in an x-ray. And so he used his words vehemently denying it to let the readers know, Hey, there may be a problem here with that, and he had to write it in a way so we could get through the military censors. David Staley: And that's only appearing in the _Call and Post?_ Felicia Ross: No, it is not, it was appear... David Staley: Throughout the Black press. Felicia Ross: Throughout the Black press [00:15:00] because, the correspondence... I mean, and that's really, that could be another show about the use of Black correspondence in the World Wars and how that happened. But, the Black newspapers had organized what we call the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association. It is now called the National Newspaper Publishers Association, but the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, you know, they pool their resources, pool their commonality, and said to the ward department that, Hey, you need to send us to cover the black troops because World War II, you know, the military was then segregated. And so you need to have us cover the activities of the Black soldiers, 'cause, you know, their families want to know how they're doing. Mm-hmm. And also, we want the nation to know that, you know, they are contributing to the war effort. They want victory for United States, but also, yes, we [00:16:00] want victory overseas, we want victory at home too. That's called the Double V campaign. David Staley: Say a little more about the Double V campaign. Felicia Ross: Basically it was a campaign that was had initiated with the _Pittsburgh Courier_, a Black newspaper, maybe a couple of months after Pearl Harbor, and that Double V campaign was, and it's a catchy name, Double V. Sure. You know? Yeah. And the Double V campaign said that, okay, you know, you want us to fight this war, overseas, but what are we fighting for? Are we going to appreciate the democracy at home that you're fighting for overseas, thus double V. David Staley: Hmm. Have you ever appeared in a documentary before? Felicia Ross: I hadn't. David Staley: So, as a scholar, what was different about that experience? Felicia Ross: Well, I, it was scripted, basically, you know, obviously you, and... David Staley: Did you write the script? Felicia Ross: I didn't write the script, but, I actually, I was approached by the producer and I don't know, you have to [00:17:00] ask him why he approached me for it, but it had started out, they knew this about Charles Loeb, and he was with the Black Press, and approached me about gathering more details about his coverage, what would find the article that he wrote, as well as anything that might be in the Black press, and I, this is a good place for me to highlight the role of Ohio State in this because, he asked me, see if you can get your students to gather the information about Black press coverage of the atomic bomb and the radiation sickness. So anything else we can find. And so, you know, we have an undergraduate research course, I think it's, you know, one, you get as much credit hours as you want. It's a pass fail, the school of Communication, we had that. And so, you know, I recruited students and had maybe about eight students and we met weekly, and told them what we needed. We met with Hilary Bussel, the subject librarian for journalism and [00:18:00] communication. She told us what resources we had in the library, you know, in terms of the databases and anything else, that would be relevant to that. And so, students were assigned, you know, different aspects of it. A couple of students, okay, I want you to look through History Makers, which is the interviews of history makers and see what you can find there. Oh, okay. I want students to look at any newspapers, coverage from the Japanese press, and then the Black press, and then, someone can keyword certain names and correspondence and terms and all that stuff. And so we just gathered all the information, downloaded the articles, sent them to the producers, and thus, they used that, I guess, wrote a script at least on that portion of the documentary. And there you have it. David Staley: Your latest publication [00:19:00] describes how Booker T Washington's accommodationist ideology may or may not have influenced the press's remembrances of the Civil War and reconstruction at the beginning of the 20th century. Tell us, tell us a little bit about this research. Felicia Ross: Right, and so first, I should tell you what accommodationist ideology is, and that is to not be as assertive about civil rights. David Staley: Mm. Felicia Ross: But work hard, make your own money, do a lot of self-help, pull you up by the bootstraps, and we will appeal to the goodwill of whites to accept us. That's basically it in a nutshell. this became, I guess, prominent with Booker T Washington toward the end of the 20th century, and if we, we look at what was happening toward the end of the 20th century, the government was rolling back on the reconstruction, civil rights progress that had taken place, you know, and those things [00:20:00] were, that's end slavery, that's the 13th Amendment, equal rights, citizenship established by the ... David Staley: 14th amendment. Felicia Ross: 14th Amendment, 14th Amendment. And voting rights. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: For black males, because women did not get the right to vote until 1920. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: And so, by the time Booker T Washington became prominent, some of those rights were, well, they hadn't gotten, they didn't get rid of those amendments, but they didn't follow them either, basically. I don't think you had slavery, they had, slavery was on the sly or whatever. The rights of equality that those amendments were supposed to guarantee wasn't happening by the time of Booker T Washington. So, so some might say that, you know, he was being a realist about, things and a lot of things about his background might have contributed to him having that particular stance. But in any case, what this publication is focusing on [00:21:00] is the way his influence might have affected the way Black newspapers covered the 50th anniversary of the Civil War. David Staley: Mm. Felicia Ross: And he was the most considered, the most prominent Black influencer of that time period. And he did own a lot of Black newspapers, and the article really focuses on the Black newspapers that he owned or subsidized. And what we found out was it did not reflect that accommodationist aspect of it. It also said that, yeah, we like reconstruction, we have good memories of reconstruction while recognizing some of the challenges of Blacks being in elected positions and the like and exercising their full rights. Yeah. You know, there's, you know, it's, it's not perfect, but they're still agreed with that. Also what was going on at the [00:22:00] time was the _Birth of a Nation_. David Staley: The, the movie? The film. Felicia Ross: The movie, yeah. _Birth of the Nation_ and the book and the plays that came just before that. And so, there were Black newspapers that were criticizing, denouncing _Birth__ of a Nation_, and the play and the book that went along with it. And so that's basically what that describes, it really is tells us the influence of Booker T Washington. Mm. It was okay that the newspapers didn't reflect that, deep down he was for civil rights as well, and he realized that approach, that strategy was not going to work. Hmm. He real this, yeah, this isn't gonna work. You know, and he would secretly subsidize efforts for voting rights and things of that nature. But of course, he died in 1915. And so, you know, it also tells us how Black political thought would evolve as necessary. We discovered that Mahatma Gandhi [00:23:00] liked Booker T Washington's self-help approach to things and I think most people do. That's yeah, help yourself, you know, have good moral character, generate your own economy, and commerce and all that stuff. However, he later realized that something more aggressive needs to be done, and so that's what I'm working on. My co-author and I are working on that, aspect of Gandhi, and how Black newspapers shared the Gandhi ideology, which was a way of filling in the gap between Booker T Washington, the leadership gap, and Dr. Martin Luther King. And my co-author, Maneesh Pandeya, knows a lot about Gandhi. He is from India. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: And so we, he's the lead on this particular research, but it did evolve from our work about Booker T Washington. David Staley: How would you describe the state of the Black press today? Felicia Ross: It's still here. Like so many other things, and I [00:24:00] can't think of anything specifically, we make a mistake of counting people out, counting institutions out. David Staley: Hmm. Felicia Ross: It is still here doing what it does. It has never tried to or been able to compete with mainstream. It had different interests, and I would say that's the situation The reach isn't as far as it could be, people don't talk about it as much, but it's still here. We have one of our alumna just took over _The__ Root_. Ashley Allison, she was here a couple of weeks ago. David Staley: Hmm. Felicia Ross: I think for some program, I've forgot the name of the program, but she, she's a graduate of here and so _The Root_ provides that same type of information, it's online. I listen to Roland Martin Unfiltered, his podcasts are watching online and, they're providing information, that he's targeting the interest of the [00:25:00] Black community. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: And so he'll cover the town halls, that maybe some of the Black political candidates will have in it might be in a state like Virginia, i'm watching it in Ohio, and of course I'm interested in Virginia because I am from Virginia, but it could be in other places as well. It will tell you what the budget, the big beautiful bill, well, how it impacts, gives the information, this is how it affects the Black community specifically, and not only maybe the Black community in this one place. And so, it's still there. Does it need a higher profile? Yeah, I wish more people would support Black media. David Staley: Hmm. Earlier you said that you spent time as a journalist, and this explains your particular sort of research interest. How did you end up in journalism, of all the things you could have done, why journalism? Felicia Ross: I like being at the scene of major events. I was impressed [00:26:00] with how journalists and, and obviously these were the broadcast journalists, I'm of that television generation, and it was impressed how they can be at different places. You know, you if someone is in London and you can see them or, and it can take you to different places, such as London, such as Los Angeles, New York, and so I said, wow, I'm, I guess maybe I had an inclination. I like to travel, although I haven't been to a lot of places, traveling appeals to me and I would like, oh wow, where, where's, television gonna take me today? And I was impressed with how broadcast news covered the civil rights movement. And I was a kid during the civil rights, I was a little girl, I was a kid. But through Walter Cronkite and that CBS news, group, I saw myself. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: I saw my community. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: On [00:27:00] television. I also saw it, you know, in the Black newspaper, but I saw it on a bigger screen. So with those things combined, I said, well, let me do this. I like telling stories and, I like to be the first to let people know things. So, let me do that. And I got into newspapers because I was too shy to be on television. I was like, oh, oh, you have to be perfect. And so I didn't have enough confidence. David Staley: Then leaving journalism to become an academic, what was that process like? Felicia Ross: I had an opportunity that I was working at the Journaling Guide and a classmate said, oh, they're looking, the recruiting professors at Winston-Salem State University, historically Black college or university. And really, I liked, while I enjoyed really working at the Journaling Guide, I enjoyed going to different places, and really seeing people before they became national. I saw, before I left the _Journaling Guide_, [00:28:00] I covered a speech by Louis Farrakhan. David Staley: Oh. Felicia Ross: And I said, okay, and he was supposed to have been the one who replaced malcolm X, X and all that. And, and I, covered it. It, it was different. And I'm like, what I remember what struck me was, they searched people before coming in, which I didn't like, but I understood, but I didn't. I said, okay, we're gonna do this. And they had guards and I can understand what happened to Malcolm X, you might want to have that. I said, but you can do it better than that. But what struck me about Louis Farrakhan was it was long. It was interesting, it was long. Oh goodness. I, I couldn't stay for the rest of it, said, I ain't got to go. It was long-winded. Few years later, he's at the top of the national, not, didn't get very favorable. recognition. Mm-hmm. I said, oh yeah, this is a long-winded guy. And so I thought, I thought that was interesting. [00:29:00] But, I chose that because I liked the stability. David Staley: Mm-hmm. Felicia Ross: In terms of the money was a little bit more, and you have the breaks and the summer break and the holiday breaks that I didn't get working, you know, at a newspaper or maybe at a broadcasting station. And so, and I felt it was safer. So that's how I got into academia. David Staley: Mm. Felecia Ross, thank you. Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer. [00:30:00]