Mass Communication’s Effect on Black History

Kiah Durham

Journalism and Mass Communication, North Carolina A&T State University

JOMC 393: Communication law and Ethics

Dr. Gary Guffey

 Mass communication has caused major strides in American history. The progress we

have made in the past century has been the direct result of using mass communication as a tool.

Before slavery was abolished, it was used to bring abolitionist together and bring an end to a

racist and inhumane system. During the civil rights movement, it was used to publicize protests,

speeches, and unequal laws, especially in the south. In the South, black people were not allowed

the same rights as white people. If they were to try to use their first amendment right, they were

met with violence and intimidation. This paper will focus on the use of hate speech/ fighting

words in the South, Dr. King’s impact on the media, and black people in the media today.

Hate speech and fighting words were a very common form of intimidation used to

suppress African Americans. In the text, Mass Media Law, hate speech and fighting words are

defined as, “...words written or spoken that attack individuals or groups because of their race,

ethnic background, religion, gender, or sexual orientation…” (Pember & Calvert 2015). Before

the fighting words doctrine was enacted, Justice Frank Murphy thought this would never raise

“constitutional problems”. This doctrine was put into place after Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire

in 1942.

In 1955, Emmitt Till was beaten and murdered by two men who claimed he was

whistling at a white woman. The two men tied his body to a cotton gin and tossed him in the

water. When his body was recovered, he was unrecognizable. When the case went to trial, the

jury found the men not guilty and Till’s mother, Mamie Till- Mobley, was given no justice by

the law. This act in 1950’s Mississippi was a show of intimidation, to strike fear into all black

people in the South. But Till- Mobley showed the world her son’s face. She said, “Emmett

suffered so people could see the ugliness of racism” (Dailey 1999). Jet Magazine later published
the photos of his body in the casket. The impact of those photos propelled the beginning of the

1960s Civil Rights Movement.

For the civil rights movement to make progress, media coverage was essential. According

to “Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement”, “The Negro revolution of the

1960s could not have occurred without the television coverage that brought it to almost every

home in the land” (Bodroghkozy 2012). With the rise of televisions in the homes of all

Americans, everyone got to see what was unfolding down South. The verbal assault, physical

assault, and mental assault were broadcasted for the world to see. It soon made the white

southerners realize how the media would end their way of living. In the end, journalists took a

few beatings as well, all in the name of segregation.

So, white southerners wanted black people to be inferior. They wanted them to feel

intimidated. They used hate speech and fighting words to get their point across, and that didn’t

work, they used violence. Dr. King decided to take the opposite approach. Dr. Martin Luther

King Jr. was a man dedicated to the African American community. He spent his entire

educational career learning how to lead this community through ministry. From there, he

continued to stand for his people through peaceful protests and speeches. He believed in non-

violent methods, which could be seen through the media. Using the media as his tool, he

managed to bring together other American citizens and abolitionists that would soon join him in

the March on Washington.

Dr. King understood his first amendment rights. He, as well as other abolitionists, knew

their first amendment right is what they needed to use to reach the media. The press had the

freedom to share anything, and black people also had the freedom to protest. Their display of

freedom to protest and the show of violence against that gave Americans a small glimpse of what
else was happening to them in the south. The use of media created a narrative that made

Americans get a front-row seat of what it’s like to not have their rights. It made Americans

realize that this couldn’t keep happening in a country built on justice for all.

After arriving on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. presented

his famous I Have a Dream speech to the country. This march, as well as previous marches, were

meant to prove that black people were equal to their white neighbors. This could only be proven

if they showed how they were intimidated by peacefully following the law. When Dr. King

presented his speech, he talked about a life where they could all be equal and friends. A life

where all people of all races could live amongst one another. The March on Washington was

proof it could be done. Like mentioned before, people had seen the brutality of living in the

south. The broadcast had brought them all together because everyone agreed that something had

to be done. According to the text, “The impact of the March on Washington ultimately was the

very fact of its televising to a national audience of millions. Ostensibly, the quarter of a million

marchers were in the nation’s capital…” (Bodroghkozy 2012).

After the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968, black people were given more rights

slowly over time. To this day, black people still experience racism from their fellow man. But

since African Americans got their rights, they were given a new face. Black men were painted as

thugs and criminals, while black women were painted as “hoodrats”. It started in the media

because the media remained powerful after the civil rights movement. Television shows and

movies began to make the black man a dangerous man. They made him scary because they

wanted to find a way to still imprison him and suppress him, so then they created the war on

drugs.
 In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, claiming that drug abuse

was “public enemy number one”, as stated in “The Shocking and Sickening Story Behind

Richard Nixons ‘A War on Drugs’” (Perry 2018). President waged a war on Americans, but he

waged the war on black people. Because enslavement and segregation had been ridden of,

imprisonment was the next way to keep black people and other people of color inferior. Black

people began to be associated with drugs and this resulted in very high incarceration rates.

According to the text, “Intensified enforcement of drug laws subjected blacks, more than whites,

to new mandatory minimum sentences-despite lower levels of drug use and no higher

demonstrated levels of trafficking among the black than the white population” (Perry 2018).

Associating black people with something meant to cause bodily harm resulted in the fear that

other Americans have for them.

Eventually, black people realized the only way to change their story is if they rewrote it.

They decided to start getting more involved in acting and creating their shows. Black

representation was important because people needed to see that we were all the same. Over the

years, more and more imagery of black families was seen on television. Family shows such as

The Cosby Show, Family Matters, The Wayans Bros, and so many others began to change the

perspective of black people.

In a journal article entitled “Black Family Imagery and Interactions on Television,

written by Bishetta Merritt and Carolyn A. Stroman, they took a look at how African American

families are viewed. They do so by performing an experiment that compares a few black family

sitcoms to one another. The experiment consisted of observing the interactions of each character

in the shows. Their physical possessions and their financial wealth were also observed. The

discussion suggests that the results mean that, “...by portraying Black families in a positive light,
these television programs may be providing role models that promote positive attitudes and

behaviors” (Merritt & Stroman 1993). This study shows that it is beneficial to have black

families on television. Not only does it change their narrative, but it also gives black kids

someone to look up to on television. Black kids don’t always have a mother and a father in their

home, and it makes the idea foreign to them. Seeing that it can happen on television shows them

that it is very possible.

Today, there has been so much progress made in the black community. They continue to

have black sitcoms and movies. There are more black celebrities, directors, writers, and recently,

a black president. For two consecutive terms in American history, we had our first black

president. He and his family were a big motivator for many black people. They were proof that

progress was made since the death of Dr. King. It was proof that black people are equal to any

other American citizen, and it was proof that black people were just as hardworking as anyone

else.

To sum it up, mass communication benefited the black community significantly in the

past couple of decades. With the use of the first amendment, African Americans have managed

to get their government to recognize their rights as an American. Using television as their chosen

weapon, many Americans saw first hand how segregation was affecting the South. Today, we

see that all that was done in the past positively impacted the community.
 Work Cited

SEAN DAILEY, S. W. (1999, Nov 15). Spreading the word ; emmitt till's mother recalls 1955

tragedy. State Journal Register Retrieved from http://ncat.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-

proquest-com.ncat.idm.oclc.org/docview/264565399?accountid=12711

“Chapter 3.” Mass Media Law, by Don R. Pember and Clay Calvert, 19th ed., McGraw-Hill

Education, 2015, pp. 124–132.

Bodroghkozy, A. (2012). Equal Time : Television and the Civil Rights Movement.

University of Illinois Press.

Perry, M. J. (2018). The shocking and sickening story behind richard Nixon’s ‘War on drugs’

that

targeted blacks and anti-war activists. Washington: American Enterprise Institute for

Public Policy Research. Retrieved from http://ncat.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-

proquest-com.ncat.idm.oclc.org/docview/2055363445?accountid=12711