Inez Baskin, 91; broke barriers as she broke news on civil rights
LOS ANGELES -- In the 1950s when female news reporters were rare -- and black female reporters rarer still -- Inez J. Baskin made a place for herself in the pages of the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama. She covered cross burnings and sit-ins and the Montgomery bus boycott, which led to an end to segregation on city buses.
Through such coverage Ms. Baskin broke ground again, joining a prestigious sorority: women whose efforts during the civil rights movement are little known, but whose hands influenced the outcome nonetheless.
Ms. Baskin, who rose from a position as a typist to write stories that documented some of the most tumultuous moments in the nation's history, died of heart failure June 28 at a hospital in Montgomery, said her goddaughter, LaWanda Mason Goodwine. She was 91.
In later years, Ms. Baskin seemed in awe of her younger self, of the moxie displayed by a woman in her late 30s, who with pen and notepad thrust herself into the center of hostility and danger and unprecedented change.
"In the '50s I didn't have any sense," she told a
She didn't perform any miracles, but on a historic day in 1956 when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sat on a Montgomery bus and rode in seats that once had been reserved for white people, Ms. Baskin rode in the seat in front of him, reporting it all. That moment was made possible only by her persistent efforts to realize a dream of becoming a reporter.
After a stint as a teacher, Ms. Baskin sought work as a typist for The Montgomery Advertiser's weekly "Negro News" section. When she asked if she could report news herself, rather than simply type items submitted by the public, the section editor's answer was no, Goodwine recalled.
Unknown to her immediate editor, she made the pitch to a different editor. The answer then was yes. Being allowed to report on the community was a victory, given the near absence of coverage of black Americans, she said.
"There wasn't very much you could read about blacks at that time, unless they were really famous," she told a reporter for The Montgomery Advertiser in 2005. "The rest of us only ended up on the front page if we stole a can of sardines and a box of crackers."
Her coverage of the life of the community was welcomed. As the push for equal rights intensified, Ms. Baskin's job gave her a front-row view of the biggest story of the day. It also landed her an opportunity to work as a stringer for Jet, a national magazine that covers blacks, and the Associated Negro Press.
Although she was a reporter and bound to objectivity, Ms. Baskin was also affected by the events of the movement. Once while she was on a bus covering Freedom Riders, the Ku Klux Klan began a terrifying late-night chase of the group. She witnessed a burning cross, set aflame by klansmen bent on intimidating black people.
"And then I was trying hard not to hate the people who did it, because then that would color my writing, my actions, and everything else. And I was trying hard not to do that," she told the Advertiser in 1995.
When leaders of the civil rights movement met to strategize and Ms. Baskin showed up to report, her presence in that male-dominated group was as obvious as it was when she was in the newsroom.
"Sometimes she'd be the only woman in the meeting," recalled Goodwine, who sometimes attended with her father, a minister who was involved in the movement.
Ms. Baskin was born June 18, 1916, in Florala, Ala., the only child of parents who stressed the importance of education, Goodwine said. She earned a degree in education from what is now Alabama State University, became a licensed social worker, and then earned a degree in divinity from Selma University. She was a church pianist for several congregations over the years and also taught ministers at theological schools and conventions.
"I don't think she wanted to be a minister," Goodwine said. "I think she knew her ministry was working with people. She implemented the first Head Start program in Montgomery and she also developed and implemented the first hot-lunch program serving low-income children."
With sterling diction and a blunt but sometimes humorous way of speaking, she shared stories of the past with audiences of young people. Earlier this year she gave a keynote address at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, where a scholarship was established in her honor.
Until the end of her life Ms. Baskin continued to write, producing a newsletter called The Monitor. Her last issue was found in the typewriter at her home in Montgomery the day she died, Goodwine said.
Ms. Baskin, who married but was a widow for decades, had no children. In addition to Goodwine she leaves nieces, nephews, and a surrogate son, daughter, and grandson.
