Abstract
This study seeks to ascertain whether the Chicago Daily Defender’s coverage of the December 4, 1969 assassination of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton represents a prevailing pattern among black newspapers or an aberration in the black media’s treatment of the infamous event. Moreover, we wish to determine how the black press coverage differed from that of the mainstream media. The study proceeds with a brief synopsis of the police actions taken on that fateful December morning, after which the data and methodological design of the study are presented and followed by an analysis of the findings. We then offer a biographical capsule of Mark Clark’s life and activism; heretofore, largely overlooked in the scholarly narratives of the raid. Finally, the study concludes with a discussion of the sources contributing to Clark’s near erasure from the annals of history.
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Notes
All the Black newspapers that were analyzed for this study were weeklies except for the Daily Defender. The Defender evolved from a weekly paper to a daily paper in 1955. The Daily Defender was published from Monday through Thursday with a Friday to Sunday weekend edition and therefore did not begin coverage until Monday, December 8, 1969. We had hoped to analyze the news coverage in the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Atlanta Daily World, but we found the coverage to be scant and repetitive and decided to omit those publications. The Daily Defender was the first Black newspaper to cover the story. Coverage of the murders in the other three Black newspapers did not appear until the week of December 13th at the earliest.
Approximately 66,500,000 newspapers were sold each day in 1968 in the United States and Canada, representing a substantial increase from the last decade. See James Strong, “Newspaper Growth Keyed to Belief in Youth”: Kurz. The Chicago Tribune. 15 May 1969, section 1, p. 3.
The number of times either Clark or Hampton’s name was mentioned throughout the 6-month timeframe of the study is ascertained by counting the number of times each person’s name was mentioned. Percentages were then calculated by totaling the amount of time both Clark and Hampton’s names were mentioned, and dividing that number into the number of times each person was cited. For example, for the Chicago Daily News, Clark was mentioned 124 times compared to 243 times for Hampton, totaling 367 mentions. The percentage was calculated by taking 124 and dividing it by 367 (0.3378) and multiplying this number by 100. Thus, in articles that appeared in the Chicago Daily News, Clarks name was cited 33.8% of the time (rounded to the nearest tenth), whereas Hampton’s name was cited in two thirds of those articles (66.2%).
The order in which their names appeared over the course of 6 months was ascertained by simply counting the number of times the reporter/editor cited Hampton’s name before Clark’s and/or Clark’s name before Hampton’s. Only those articles that mentioned both men were analyzed for this purpose. Percentages were calculated in the same fashion as is presented above. For example, in the Chicago Daily News, Clark’s name appeared first 4 times while Hamptons name was cited 97 times; the sum of these numbers is 101. To calculate the percentage for Clark, the authors of this study divided 4 by 101 (0.0396) and multiplied this number by 100. Thus, for article in the Chicago Daily News, Clark was mentioned first 4% of the time (rounded to the nearest tenth).
The number of times each man’s name appeared in the headlines was determined by counting the number of times each name appeared in a story’s headline. In instances where both names appeared in the headline of a given story both men were given credit. It should be noted that there were numerous articles in which neither Clark’s nor Hampton’s name appeared in the headline. The authors of this study did not calculate percentages for “number of times each name appeared in the headlines” because Clark’s name appeared so few times
in the headlines.
There were one or two sentences that mentioned the birth of his son on the 29th of December to his fiancée, Deborah Johnson, but that was the extent of it.
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Jeffries, J.L., Dyson, O.L. & Jones, C.E. Mark Clark’s Tenuous Place in History. J Afr Am St 21, 6–25 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-017-9349-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-017-9349-5