In Labor? Come Back on Wednesday

Yvonne Cantrell Bickley (Ph.D. student) (September 2023) winner of the Robert Lance Award for Outstanding Student Research paper and runner-up for the J. William Snorgrass Award for Outstanding Minority Journalism Research paper by the American Journalism Historians Association for “In Labor? Come Back on Wednesday,” a paper presented at the 42nd Annual American Journalism Historians’ Association convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Abstract: This research examined considered news coverage in Atlanta of the desegregation of the city’s largest public hospital, Grady Memorial, in both White- and Black-owned newspapers from the late 1950s through 1968. This was a time when life expectancy for Blacks was almost seven years less than Whites and when Black mothers could deliver babies at Grady only on Wednesdays. This study provided insights into how Black and White journalists navigated Civil Rights coverage at a time when the culture was influenced and largely defined by the series of laws that enforced racial segregation known as Jim Crow laws.