Remembering when the country's largest black weekly proudly put the 'Nation's No. 1 White Reporter' on its front pages

75 years ago this month the mighty Pittsburgh Courier delivered Ray Sprigle's powerful and shocking account of his daring undercover mission into the Jim Crow South to millions of black Americans.

Seventy-five Septembers ago the country’s largest black weekly was proudly running Ray Sprigle’s series about the oppression and humiliation he saw and experienced while passing for a black man in the Jim Crow South.

The 21-part series shocked Northern whites in 1948 — and still does.

Sprigle’s original seriess is reprinted here.

But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s star reporter told America’s blacks nothing they didn’t already know about the inequality they faced in 17 Southern states where segregation and legal discrimination by race was the law.

Above is a photo of the first of seven Page 1 articles run by the Courier, which at the time had a circulation of more than 300,000 around the USA and printed local editions in a dozen cities from New York to LA.

And here’s an excerpt from ‘30 Days a Black Man,’ my book about Sprigle’s series and the impact it had on a country that was strictly — and shamefully — segregated by law and custom in the South and North:

"On August 21, the front page of the Courier’s national and city editions was turned into a slightly insane billboard to promote what it immodestly touted was “the most amazing, astounding, gripping and revealing story ever printed in ANY newspaper.”

Across the top of the page in huge white-on-black type was written “I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days!” Five large shoe prints in red ink—simulating the tracks of an investigative reporter hot on the trail of truth—walked diagonally across the page, tramping on the headlines of legitimate news stories like the one about “white hoodlums” throwing tomatoes at young superstar Sarah Vaughan while she sang at a jazz concert in Chicago.

A six-by-eight-inch portrait of “the Nation’s number one white reporter”—Ray Sprigle in his trademark Stetson—stared out at the reader. A red banner spanning the bottom of the page asked “WHAT IS IT LIKE FOR A WHITE MAN TO BE A NEGRO IN THE SOUTH? . . . Ray Sprigle, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Posed as a Negro for One Month . . . Read His Series of Exclusive Articles in The Courier Next Week.”

The Courier’s “news” article about the upcoming series broke all the rules of “objective” journalism. No misleading exaggeration was spared. It opened with “Exclusive!—The veil has been lifted! The iron curtain has been pierced!” Two paragraphs later came:

“Tearing aside the hitherto impenetrable curtain of darkness flung around the 10,000,000 Negroes in the South, Mr. Sprigle brings you a white man’s graphic tale of the torments and terrors, sleepless nights of fear and trepidation, lynchings and the graphic panorama of how Negroes actually live in the South—as seen through his penetrating eyes.

“With one fell swoop, intrepid top-flight reporter Sprigle has ripped down the walls around the economic execution of thousands upon thousands of Negroes in the South and brought all the nefarious schemes of ‘white supremacy’ and all its implications into the light of day. . . .

“Of some 2,000 daily newspapers and more than 11,000 weeklies and periodicals in the United States only twelve daily papers dared carry this graphic story . . . and only the Pittsburgh Courier—of all the Negro newspapers in the world—is presenting these historical and economically important articles.”

A week later Sprigle’s series took over the front page of nearly three hundred thousand copies of the Pittsburgh Courier. The photo of him in disguise was gigantic. The “I Was a Negro . . .” headline couldn’t have been heftier if it said “World War III Declared.” The subhead went right to Sprigle’s main point: “Discrimination Is Annoying in North; It’s Bloodstained Tragedy in Dixie.” And to make sure every reader knew what a heavyweight Sprigle was, his byline was followed by “(Nation’s No. 1 White Reporter).”

Sprigle’s undercover series — the first major ‘expose’ of conditions blacks faced under American apartheid by a white newspaper — was distributed by the Courier to blacks throughout the Deep South, where no white papers carried a word of it.

The historic series shocked the white North and pissed off the white South. It greatly pleased black leaders like Walter White of the NAACP and was praised twice by Eleanor Roosevelt in her daily syndicated newspaper column.

Time, Newsweek and other print media reported favorably on it. But the New York Times didn’t write a word about what the country’s ‘No. 1 White Reporter’ had done to wake up the country’s white readers to the ugly realities of the Jim Crow South. Despite my efforts, it still hasn’t.