MLK commemoration highlights the struggle for civil rights and inclusion

Prof. Melissa Gilliam (left) speaks with her mother, Dorothy Butler GIlliam, the first African-American female reporter at the Washington Post, about diversity and inclusion. One of Dorothy Butler Gilliam's first assignments at  The Washington Post  was covering integration in the deeply segregated South. As the newspaper's first African-American female reporter, the work carried particular pressures and dangers. Speaking at the University of Chicago's commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Butler Gilliam recalled the courage of James Meredith, who sparked riots when he enrolled at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1962. She also detailed the conviction of black journalists who felt unsafe and unwelcome covering the civil rights movement across the South-often smuggling in typewriters or wearing disguises, or in Butler Gilliam's case, sleeping at a black-owned funeral home to get the story. "I knew that if I failed, it would be tougher for the next black woman to be hired by a major daily newspaper," Butler Gilliam said.