Dorothy Gilliam: Interview #5

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Moorhus: We want to start this evening with the column that you started writing in 1979. Did the Post editors give you any guidelines before you started to write?

Gilliam: Let me back up a little bit to how that whole thing came about. I had been working as an editor in the "Style" section for seven years, and the mood was changing. I felt that I really just wanted something different. One of the things I did was to send a proposal to [Benjamin C.] Bradlee about the [Washington Post] magazine. That didn't fly with him, but then he asked what else I was interested in, and that's when I proposed the column.

In terms of guidelines, basically what he suggested was that I move over from the "Style" section to "Metro," and start writing some kind of long analysis, feature, whatever, kind of pieces, so that they could get a sense of how I would do. So I didn't come over and immediately start writing columns. I came over and I did some fairly longish "people" pieces, and then I did a number of other pieces, but things that I think really came out of the community in a way that they were not touching.

So after I did that for a few months, then the editors at that time, the "Metro" editor and the city editor—the "Metro" editor was Bob Woodward, and the city editor was Herbert Denton. They, I'm sure in concert with Bradlee, said, "Let's start the column." So that's what happened.

There were lots of discussions about what a column should contain, but no real guidelines—I mean, no parameters. My sense is that they probably preferred the "people" columns. When I started trying to do more issue-oriented columns, getting in more of the issues of race, etc., that those columns were not as popular.

The eighties were real difficult times. You had Ronald Reagan in the White House. You had the country turning from the sixties and the seventies into a very conservative mode by the eighties. I had a lot of strong opinions, and I know that sometimes I would feel that people would write notes in my computer, taking issue with certain things—not editors, but just other reporters. Sometimes they would sign them, occasionally they wouldn't, but most of the time they would. A lot, a lot of reader response. I'll get some of those columns, those early columns, because they really were very different.

I often got accused of being a black racist and just a whole bunch of stuff. You see, I think part of it is that in those days, first of all, there weren't that many women writing columns. There weren't that many blacks writing columns. The other Post columnist who was black was [William] Raspberry, who was on the editorial page. I love him a lot. He's wonderful, and he's a good friend, but he leans much more to kind of a conservative, moderate position, and I considered myself much more liberal and much stronger on—I mean, I would not necessarily try to hedge an opinion; I just let it out there.

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Gilliam: They were Washingtonians who lived primarily in the city, and people who didn't get very much play, people I felt were kind of presented in sort of more stereotypical terms. For example, I did a piece—I picked a young man and really followed him for several years, who was a student at Cardoza High School in Washington. He came from a very poor family, lived above a grocery store on Fourteenth Street, and he had been a real hell-raiser, just a total hell-raiser, but through the help of sports and a number of teachers who just worked with him, he just turned his life around. His name was "Big Red." I did sort of the first story on him, and then I went back and did a story a year later when he graduated from high school. Then I went back. Then he was picked up. He went to junior college, and I went out to his first game out in Iowa, following this kid from Fourteenth Street out to the middle of Iowa, and his adjustments. Finally, I just happened to have been out in Arizona when he was at the University of Arizona, and I did a piece on him then.

So it was that kind of thing, of trying to really take sometimes these young people who were just sort of stereotypes and statistics, and just really turn him into a human being that people could understand, could admire, and then to also try to use it also as a way to challenge him.

Moorhus: How did you find him?

Gilliam: Through some contacts at the school. One of the reasons that I think I got deep into the community was because by the time I started writing the column, I [had] lived in the community for fifteen years. I hadn't written for the Post that whole time, but I had been at the Post for a little while in the sixties, and then I was out and doing a number of other things, as I discussed with you earlier. Then when I came back to the Post as an editor, I also made a lot of community contacts, and I also have been of the community so often.

One of the reasons that I think you get a certain kind of writing is that reporters just kind of come into the community and live here and start writing, and they don't have very deep roots in the community. And I do have those roots, so a lot of times I'll get people who will call me and tell me about certain people or certain things or certain events. This, I think, is part of the reason, in a way—some people will say, "You're just too close to the community," you know. I think that gives, for some readers, the sense of being too sympathetic. I feel very appreciated by the community. I mean, I get lots and lots and lots of mail and phone calls and people who say that they feel through the years that I have my finger on the pulse of the community, and that's reflected in the writing.

All of that comes from, as I say, feeling very much a part of the community. So a lot of the ideas I got, I remember one of the early—I'm trying to remember was this a column or was I still writing those kind of occasional longish features before I made the switch. But I remember I did a piece on a man who I had actually met in the sixties, and who was now just a total victim of a lot of the issues that are really rife in this town. They called him "Lamb," and I wrote about him and what was going on in his life and the community. He lived in the Mount Pleasant community. Sometimes I wrote about people that I knew, because I had seen them around. Living in Mount Pleasant at the time, I really had gotten to know a real wide cross-section of people. But ideas came from everywhere, as I said, from readers, from friends, from people who just liked what I wrote, or didn't like what I wrote, just a variety of ways, a general number of ways we get ideas.

Moorhus: How is the writing and the editing different, doing a column, from doing the kind of feature pieces you were doing?

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Donna [Britt] came on under the new guys, under [Robert G.] Kaiser and [Leonard] Downie [Jr.]. So I guess it's been a combination, but I guess the person who has probably done the most would be Bradlee, as far as I'm concerned. He certainly was the person who gave me opportunity. I know that there were many times that there were things that he didn't like. And I don't care. I mean, it isn't even important to me that anybody share my opinion; what's important to me is that what I do is done as well as I can do it. And once I've done that, there's nothing more I can do.

The fact that there are white people on the paper who think I make black folks victims, or thought I did, or whatever, you know, I couldn't care less, because, in part, they have no real idea of what the black experience is like, anyway. I guess I just object to seeing two black women sort of being pitted [against each other]. Why do we have to be compared? She can just be who she is, and I can be who I am. But I know it's deeper than that. I know that's what journalists do, unfortunately—compare and pit and stir up stuff, sometimes when there's nothing to stir up.

Moorhus: Tell me about how syndication happened, and how does that work?

Gilliam: Syndication happens in many different ways. The Post itself has a writers' group, and Bill Raspberry was part of that. They never asked me to be a part of that; I asked to be a part of it. They said they already had a woman, and that was Ellen Goodman. So that took care of that. There may have been some other reasons they did not want me, but that was the reason they gave me.

So I was eventually picked up by a small syndicate that, again, came to me. Why am I blanking on the name of the syndicate? It folded after a few years. I can get that for you at some point, the name of that syndicate. I know my column appeared for several years in the Philadelphia Daily News, in several other papers, and, of course, it's been on the L.A. Times and Washington Post wire, and it was on that for years. When I first became syndicated, I asked them to take it off, because when it's on the Washington Post/L.A. wire, you don't get paid extra for it; they just use it. But when it's syndicated, there is payment for any extra usage of it. But syndication can work any way. I know some columnists have, when they were not approached by a syndicate, worked very hard to find a syndicate—gone and interviewed and called and sent columns. So you can take a very active role in this, or you can simply wait to be discovered.

Moorhus: Did it change the topics that you wrote about?

Gilliam: Well, I did a little less local stuff, yes. I've been doing a lot more local stuff since I've been back from New York, primarily because the paper—not that I do exclusively that, but I've been doing more because the nature of the business is changing a lot, and they're really trying to be much more local and regional.

Moorhus: Oh, really?

Gilliam: Not in the national sections, but in the metropolitan sections. You'll see over the country more papers have a local columnist or two or three. They still have Op Ed Page columnists, but basically the "Metro" columnists are people who are expected to write a lot, although, as I said again, none of this is exclusive, because I've written from as far away as Russia. So it just depends on where I am and what I'm doing.

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Ladies Garment Union, and the Washington Post was run like the Democratic party. I didn't know what they were talking about, but there certainly exists within newsrooms a specific set of dynamics that make a lot of difference in terms of how one operates as a columnist or a report or whatever.

I feel like I'm really rambling. Restate the question and let me get refocused.

Moorhus: You said it took you a while to find your voice, and you also said that you separated from your husband. I was wondering if those two were linked in terms of your finding yourself and then deciding with your own voice you wanted to perhaps go further in your life in a different direction.

Gilliam: I don't know that they were linked. It's an interesting question. I certainly know that after I separated from my husband, I began to find more of myself. I think that perhaps even in the best of marriages, there's a certain amount of "deselfing" that goes on with one party or the other. Usually that party is the woman. Certainly it happened in my marriage, particularly because I was married to an artist who certainly at that time was particularly temperamental and brilliant and emotional. So there were a lot of issues. So certainly once that separation took place, I was trying to find—I call it "reself," and part of that was getting my voice and having a voice.

Then, as I said, the column shifted, because after a while I wasn't satisfied simply doing those "people" pieces. I felt they were too soft. I wanted to be able to have something to say on problems, issues like racism, like a lot of the problems in the city. I think after that difficult period, the column started getting a lot better, I would say. In my view, it was a year or so where I felt I was—I guess the word is "uneven." But I will show you a lot of columns. I think I'm harder on myself, as I think most people are, than others are.

Moorhus: But maybe it's not hard on yourself; maybe it's very insightful, looking back, and you can see how you grew, and that growth shows up in the columns.

Gilliam: I hope that's the case. I certainly know that it has been a growth period. As I said, when I said I grew up in public, I really mean that quite literally, because I can remember there would be times and events when I would just literally throw up my hands in print, you know, and I certainly see that now I don't have those same reactions. I remember during the time of the Atlanta murders,* I was just feeling somewhat hopeless about that whole situation. [Tape interruption.]

Moorhus: When the phone rang the first time, you were talking about the piece that was withdrawn, or that Ben Bradlee questioned about the Ku Klux Klan. I want to go back to that. Then you had started talking about the Atlanta murders and how you felt about that.

Gilliam: Let me start with the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan marched in Washington. There was a big uproar before. It was on a Sunday. I certainly joined in the uproar and the outrage over that. Something unexpected happened, and that is that there was violence. A lot of Washingtonians went on a minor rampage. It wasn't a huge one, but any loss of property is a problem. I wrote this column, and I basically said I didn't usually condone violence, but in this

______________________ * From 1979 to 1981, more than twenty young black boys were found murdered. In February 1982, Atlanta photographer Wayne B. Williams, 23, was found guilty of having killed two boys; other cases considered closed.

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explain what was going on. Things that I thought were stereotypes and distortions or whatever, I think I may have avoided them.

One thing I didn't write as much about—various aspects of middle-class blacks as I might have. I've written about middle-class blacks and I've written about people who are middle class who have other roles, like politicians or school leaders, and I've also written about middle-class blacks as such. But I remember once some editor saying, "Why don't you write about black people and their maids?" I mean, that was one that I chose not to write about. Looking back, I guess I could have. It might have been interesting, but it just didn't seem to be very important to me to do something like that.

There are things that I don't write about (that I might write about) if they possibly expose somebody else to some kind of ridicule. And I'm not talking about public officials and things like that; I'm talking about, say, even family matters that I feel invade the privacy of members of my family. I won't write about it, even though I might want to. My daughters have reached the point where they've said, "Before you write about me, ask me."

[End Tape 1, Side A; Begin Tape 1, Side B]

Gilliam: I write about them a lot, and I have written about them over the years off and on. A lot of people say that they feel that they know my daughters. It's hard for you coming into Washington. I think you came when I was gone, which meant when I came back, I was writing less, so you've probably seen much less of what I've written and have much less of a feel for what I do, because I've just been writing less and been doing a lot more of the organizational stuff.

I write about them, and have, but I think what happens is that you have to realize I started writing this column around 1980, so that was ten years, and that was the ten years when they were really very much coming of age. I wrote about their high school graduation, their college graduation, those kind of things.

Moorhus: You said earlier that the columnists in a newspaper sort of parallel with the stars on the news broadcasts. Does that imply that being a columnist is a prestige position and that it's something one aspires to and you move up to that in a newspaper kind of hierarchy?

Gilliam: Oh, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. There's no doubt about the fact that being a columnist is a prestigious position. That's why when there are changes and shifts and all, it can be so difficult for all involved. First of all, you're assured of space on a regular basis, and you get to write anything you want to. You don't have to go through editors. You don't have to travel that phalanx of higher-ups saying, "Yes," "No," "Why is this a story? I don't like this," this, that, or the other. You do what you want. In a sense, once they say you can do it, they're kind of locked into it. They can always fire you, and everybody maintains that right, but in a sense, it's a little more difficult to do that, because you also build up a following. So you have some community out there that you can go to and scream and yell when certain things happen. Like this person who is a friend, and I didn't want her to do that initially, because I said, "Oh, no, you can't do that," and she said, "Yeah, but—," but she will write a letter to The Washingtonian and will have somebody else write a letter. Now, whether they'll use it, I don't know. But that's the kind of following you build up as a columnist that you don't necessarily build up as a reporter.

Look at the Post, for example. David Broder, who is known as a fine reporter, also writes columns, but I think he is better known as a personality than, say, someone who is considered equally fine as a reporter, but who doesn't do columns. A Tom Edsell, for example, is known

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Gilliam: Let me just back up a little bit. One of the parallel tracks that I was on even all the time I was doing the twice-a-week column was also working in the industry to try to increase the number of minorities. In 1985, I became chair of the Institute for Journalism Education.* Previous to that I had been on the board. The Institute for Journalism Education is a multiracial organization dominated by non-white people, but a multiracial organization that pushed training for minorities. So I spent a lot of time working within this organization at the same time I was doing the column. That, in itself, is unusual to be both a journalist and really be involved in industry work, I mean really trying to bring about change. The Institute for Journalism Education has succeeded in putting almost five hundred journalists of color either into the business or helping them move up in the business.

Moorhus: Is that based here in Washington?

Gilliam: No, it's based in California. So I go to California at least two times a year, sometimes three. Based in California, we ran the programs at various universities. One was at the University of California at Berkeley; that was the entry-level reporter program. One other is an editor training program which we run at the University of Arizona, and the other is a management training program which we ran at Northwestern. The entry-level reporter program we closed down about four years ago, but the editor training and the management training we continue to run to this day. Plus we've added some other programs. So there was always that involvement in the industry at the same time I was writing the column.

Moorhus: When did you get involved?

Gilliam: In 1976, I joined the IJE board. I was asked to join the board. I did board-level things, but I actually became chair in 1985.

Moorhus: And '76 is also when the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) was established.

Gilliam: NABJ began in 1975. But that was totally separate. The National Association of Black Journalists is a membership and an advocacy organization. IJE is a training organization, primarily devoted to training. As I said, I use "people of color" because it was all races, not just African-Americans. So I had had this continuing interest in the industry and had been steadily working on industry-related issues, trying to increase those numbers, and did a lot of stuff. I think we did a lot of good and have continued to do good.

One of the reasons I decided to take a leave was to go to the Freedom Forum, to write a book about these issues of racial diversity which I had been working in for the previous ten years, from '76 to '86—Lord, really thirteen, fourteen years by the time I decided to try for this fellowship. But the most concentrated work had been the period of '85 to '90.

So when the fellowship came—and of course the Post was very aware of what I was doing, because they had supported it. The Post had also given money to the institute, because there had been a number of Post people who had been through the programs that I had been involved in. So when I went away, I'm sure I was also feeling a certain kind of burnout. It had been a long time, a very difficult experience because of some of the things I've talked about—the rough periods, the

______________________ * In 1993, the Institute for Journalism Education was renamed Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in honor of Robert C. Maynard.

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Plus, the other industry work that I had done was kind of converging with a new focus in the industry on diversity, so I found myself very caught up in a number of activities. I was on one of the diversity subcommittees of the Newspaper Association of America; that was formerly the American Newspaper Publishers Association. I was invited to both diversity summits, sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America. When I say invited, I mean invited to participate. These were meetings where there were CEOs around the table representing about eight hundred American newspapers. So my profile in industry-related diversity work was growing.

Another thing that had happened while I was away was that I had started coming to terms with myself some more, too, because, as I said, I was feeling some burnout when I left, and I did some interesting work with a bioenergetic therapist named Alexander Lowen. It was very funny, because, you know, when you lose your father when you're very young—my dad died when I was fourteen, but in many ways because he became ill and really wasn't functioning at peak level—I think I lost my dad the way I remembered him when I was probably nine or ten. So a lot of my ideas about the world just aren't shaped in quite the way I think they'd be shaped if I'd had a father who was there giving me certain information.

I can still remember Dr. Lowen saying to me, "You've got to be less naive about the world." I would tell him how frustrated I would be that things didn't change more—racial things, gender issues, why some of the problems with women didn't change more, why all the race problems. He just went into these long discussions about why things change so slowly. He said, "It doesn't mean you shouldn't fight and try to change them, but you can't sacrifice yourself and burn yourself up worrying about something that you have relatively little control over." A lot of stuff was really very simple.

People always talk about therapists as father figures, but I really felt in many ways that he really was saying some of the things that I might have heard from a father, except that I realized that there was nothing in my family, from my mother or my father, really to prepare me for a world like the Washington Post, like being a columnist at probably the second most important newspaper in America, in Washington, D.C., and stepping out on point twice a week, saying what was on my mind. So whereas my father wouldn't have had the experience to have outfitted me for this, there were certain things he might have said, that might have made it a little less stressful.

At any rate, one of the things that Lowen talked about, he said there's so much in this culture that is really crazy. He said people move so fast, they move too fast to think. He said a lot of the culture is running wild, and we're running wild with it. A lot of stuff that when you think about it, they sound almost like homilies. But I came back to Washington a little less stressed out, and I knew that there was only one day left for me to write.

I thought about whether I even wanted to come back. I had some offers to teach. I had an offer to teach at the Columbia J School. These are not things that were consummated, but it was a serious offer, because I knew all the players. But I just wasn't ready for that. I knew that there were some other things that I wanted to do. One of the things I wanted to do was to run for president of the National Association of Black Journalists. I realized that, once Donna started writing, because I knew she had been hired to be a columnist, that there was going to be one day a week left. So my discussions with the assistant managing editor were that I would do that column and then I would do some other pieces in "Outlook" or "Style." I talked to both the editor of "Style" and "Outlook," and they said, "Yes, we'd welcome anything you wanted to do."

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something that was really important to me, which was run for this NABJ presidency, and if I get it, I think it will very much feel to me as though my career has kind of come full circle. You know, I don't know what I would do after that if I get the office. It's a two-year term, so I would be in the office, God willing, till probably August of '95. I've certainly talked all this over with the people at the Post, who support my running.

Moorhus: Will you continue to write?

Gilliam: Oh, yes.

Moorhus: I wanted to ask you about Donna Britt. Where did she come from, and have you talked to her at all about what your experience was when you first got to the Post?

Gilliam: Donna came from L.A. You know, I'm not quite sure. Donna worked for USA Today at one point. I'm sure if you read The Washingtonian article, which just came out, it will tell you that. She came to the Post as a "Style" writer and worked in "Style" for maybe three years—two, three years. Just a very strong voice. Just a very, very good, good writer, and very much a younger generation. I guess Donna was under thirty-five when she got there, and probably thirty-seven now. I always liked her writing when she was in "Style," and I've encouraged her since she's been at the Post, been in the "Metro" section. I have talked to her about my work, and we've been supportive of each other. I'd be lying if I didn't say I didn't have some feeling, but it was very slight, because I think she's just a good, strong voice.

She's somebody I try to encourage. She would always say, "I just can't imagine what it was like at this place for a black woman, talking about being here in the sixties and even the seventies. And you were the first columnist!" She understood what it was. And even now, she rarely comes to the office. She said, "It's just too crazy. I just can't." She just doesn't do that. She came on with a lot of self-confidence. What makes me feel good is because I feel it's because women like me have been able to survive and to break some ground, that you can have a woman like Donna come and do what she does.

So I feel there's very much a continuity, and I feel that she very much appreciates the support and the encouragement that I've given her, because I know how hard it is when you put yourself out there. I certainly don't put myself out there in the way that Donna has, but I've put myself out there in other ways. By that I meant just baring your soul in your column. I have bared mine less, as I said, on a lot of personal things. I don't write about myself and what's going on in my family with the same regularity that she does, but certainly in terms of my views on race or my views on issues, it's real tough. Because when you put it out there, then you're going to get commented on and you're going to get nasty phone calls and the letters and the racist mail and hate mail from Virginia. There's a lot that comes, and I know she's gotten her share of all that, too, and I did, too, in those early years.

So, yes, I have shared with her some of my experiences. When she's found herself feeling particularly bruised about either something she's written that was very risky, that she felt real exposed on, or whatever, I've tried to talk to her and just share with her. I've tried to tell her to protect herself, you know, because a lot of the things she's going through are things that I went through in a different way.

Moorhus: That's what your work within the industry has worked for, getting more people like Donna into the business and into the mainstream papers.

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This is what just fascinated me about this whole business, and one of the reasons I'm running for NABJ president at all, is because I think communities have to be educated about how they can help pressure the media to do a better job on that, and those of us who are in the media who know the pressure points have to be willing and able to apply that pressure, too.

Many blacks who talk about working for black newspapers are talking about that because they can advocate on behalf of the community, but they can also try to present a more balanced portrait, one that really doesn't distort the community—I hate to say "the community"—but that doesn't distort African-Americans. So I think a lot of harm has been done by media in the distorted—and sometimes there are sins of omission as well as commission, but I think overall almost any reasonably nonpartisan critic would say there has been distortion.

[End Tape 1, Side B; Begin Tape 2, Side A]

Moorhus: I did do a computer printout of the titles of your column for about a year, in order to see the kinds of topics you have written about over a longer period before you went on the sabbatical. One of the recurrent topics that you were covering—but I didn't read the columns, so I don't know the content—was the trials and tribulations of Mayor Marion Barry.* I wonder if that fits in here in terms of whether that was an issue for you about how you handled his situation. Was that an issue for you?

Gilliam: Yes, in a sense, because there were times when I wrote criticizing the Post coverage of him, because I thought there was a period in the eighties—I would say probably the mid-eighties, maybe '85, '86, something in there, '87—when I thought the paper was not using good editorial judgment in terms of printing articles that was pure leaks, more leaks and some stuff that was unsubstantiated, over-reliance on official sources, not enough checking. So there were times when I was really, really pained, I mean, with the Post coverage. I would write sometimes negatively about Barry, I mean critically about Barry. Occasionally I would praise him. But I really felt sometimes I was just so disappointed with the Post's coverage. I just thought there was some irresponsible reporting.

I know this is not going to win me any friends, and I know that's part of what that article is talking about, when they talk about blacks as victims, but I felt that if you're going to write an article that is going to condemn an official, no matter what, then let's have the evidence and let's get it from a variety of sources. But the U.S. attorney and that whole office, they really were just sort of pouring things in.

Moorhus: So your critique was of the journalism coverage of Barry's situation.

Gilliam: Of the early situation, especially before we got any kind of concrete information. When we started getting concrete information that something was wrong and we got beyond the rumors and innuendos, then I was the first one to call for him to resign. For example, once the mayor was found to have been at the Ramada Inn, at this hotel, with a person who was identified as a person who has dealt in drugs, at that point when he refused to give any kind of explanation for

______________________ * Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, D.C., was arrested in a police raid in January 1990. He was charged with, and convicted of, possession of cocaine, a misdemeanor, and subsequently served a six-month prison term. Following his release, Barry was elected in September 1992 to the D.C. Council as the representative of Ward 8.

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saying, "We're not going to let one murder go unnoticed." On the one hand, of course, you don't want it to go unnoticed. A life is a life.

But what happens too seldomly is any kind of real depth reporting on what's really going on so that you present what's going on in a particularly besieged inner city community in its larger context—the different places and different levels of where drugs are permitted to get into the country, how they aren't stopped at the borders, the big business that drugs are, the billion-dollar money laundering in the banks, the multibillion-dollar gun sales that are involved. I've written specific columns about this kind of thing. Some of that needs to be—when you don't write in that kind of context and really educate your readers on and on so they really understand, it is so easy to scapegoat, and that's what this country—that's what white America has done with black folks all along. So I think in many ways you take these recent tragedies, and I'm not painting black folks as victims; I'm saying they've been victimized and obviously blacks have a responsibility. But it's just rare that we make our public understand in a larger context what is really going on. That, to me, is not really responsible journalism. So that's an ethical issue, I think—the whole coverage issue.

We're in the midst of a lot of change in journalism. I always say it's a revolution in many ways. The technological revolution has made a change. But readers are dropping off, the newspapers are having to downsize, people aren't reading newspapers as much. The Post has been somewhat fortunate in that it's been able to pretty much maintain its readers, but in many places newspapers are closing down. So there's a lot that's happening in the business now. It's particularly troublesome when people stop reading newspapers, because then we know that even though newspapers are, of course, businesses, they also serve a real vital function in the democracy. So what happens if people really break those newspaper habits? Where are they really getting the kind of information they need to function in a democracy, so they can form decisions about voting and stuff like that? Obviously there's television, but television is doing less and less of that.

So I think we're in a real interesting and kind of challenging time, where I feel newspapers have a greater responsibility. Certainly the networks, we know, right now are in turmoil—have been. We don't know which morning we'll wake up and find out we're one network shorter. So it's an interesting transition period.

Moorhus: Have you experienced any incidents or situations of sexual harassment?

Gilliam: There are people who make sexual remarks and are not sexual as much as they are remarks with just sort of those kind of connotations. I guess you call it arriving at a certain point in my life or whatever, but there's just nothing that I can't particularly handle. Some of them, they come from people who you just sort of say, "Oh, that's what's-his-name," you know. There's nothing that's been so offensive that I would feel like I needed to go and report somebody.

One of the things is, once again, we get back to the particular culture of the organization. Those kind of things may be—I don't know. I'm just thinking of a couple of people that I know, and they're always saying little things. You just say, "Oh, that's what's-his-name," and you go on. It's not an issue. I don't find it an issue that I can't handle. Perhaps at some unconscious level it's playing havoc with my self-esteem and I don't know it. [Laughter.]

Moorhus: Probably not. You're pretty reflective. It probably just isn't there.

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We had been invited to dinner by a builder. I mean, you know the people who are always the socialites, who are the people involved in art in every town in America. We were invited to dinner at this builder's house, whose wife was very involved in the arts. It's the typical rich man with the socialite wife—especially before the women's movement when women started having something on their own. So we went to his home, and I believe they were buying one of Sam's paintings. What I remember was not Sam's paintings, but they had the most incredible collection of African art, and they had built this house that seemed to me the length of about three houses, and they had erected all of these special cases for their African art. They had the most stunning original pieces, you know, with real human hair, and the cases were specially [built]—the correct humidity for the care of that particular object. This was just a private house. It just comes to mind, of many experiences.

Talk about naive, I was really naive at the beginning. In fact, Sam's dealer, when Sam had his first show at the P Street Gallery, his dealer was a woman named Nesta Dorrance. Nesta lived out on Reservoir Road out there, and she was giving a party for him. I think it was a party before the opening, or maybe it was a party the weekend afterwards or something; I don't know. But I remember calling my mother, or writing her a letter or something after that, and commenting on the fact that they had all these waiters and waitresses. I mean, they had all the help and all that. Because at that point, that was new. It just seemed like such a—looking back, it's like how could you be impressed with that? But I realize, yeah, those were some of the early experiences. I hadn't grown up with having all those things. And we were the guests of honor, you know, having all this sort of pomp and circumstance.

So those were years of learning a lot about the world, about a different world, and it's an experience I think that a lot of reporters don't have, because it's a fairly rarified world. Not that many people are married to artists who go on to do well, who really are successful. People are a little more likely to be married to a lawyer or somebody else. It was really quite different, I think, for both of us.

As I said, Sam was an abstract expressionist. During the sixties, he came into some conflict with a lot of the black artists who felt that his art wasn't "black" enough, so it was real interesting, because I was always, in my writing, considered too "black," and he was considered in his art not "black" enough. So it was like, this is one stupid country. [Laughter.] But he was always very, very, very strong about what he wanted to do in his work, and he always did it, and would fight off whatever he had to fight off. I was much more vulnerable to what people said and thought, etc., etc.

Moorhus: You've said that there was not social support and social friends from your work at the Post. Where did you get your social friends, and what kind of a social life did you have here in Washington?

Gilliam: I may have overstated if I said that I got no social friends or no social support, because in a sense, in the early years, in the sixties, during that period I got some social support from one of the other black reporters in particular, and I also got some support from my city editor, Ben Gilbert, who really reached out to both Sam and me. But I never felt that my main friendships were from the Post, so my social supports in those early years, in the sixties, were primarily neighbors, and I also went to church. I was not real strongly religious in the organized sense, because that's something Sam didn't feel strongly about, so in those early years we were still trying to negotiate and find common ground, you know. My social support were people that I met through my work, as I was beginning to build a Washington network.

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Gilliam: That was in 1971, and that trip was with Sam. Sam was invited to show in an exhibition in New Delhi called the Indian Triennial. They were really trying to pattern it after the Venice Biennole. I think that they probably only had it once, maybe twice at most. What they did was, through the Museum of Modern Art, I believe, they invited about seven or eight Americans over for this exhibition, to install their works, and then to take part in a number of official things.

That was a fascinating experience to me. I had never been in a country and seen that kind of abject poverty in the way that it was there. Certainly there was some poverty in Africa in the sixties, but nothing like that, not the kind of urban squalor and poverty, and culturally a lot of it was very strange. It was a very fascinating experience to me. Not the same kind of trip that I had in Africa, but another way of just broadening my perspective.

En route over there, we stopped in Beirut, which is fascinating. When I look at what has happened to Beirut in the interim, it's certainly very, very different.

In the late sixties, we first went to Europe, and Sam, basically by about 1970, was having shows in Europe every other year, so we traveled on a regular basis to Europe. He had a dealer in Paris, a woman named Dorothea Speyer, who owned the Speyer Gallery on the Left Bank, so he showed with her and we'd go over there. So there are many, many, many, many memories of being in Paris on a regular basis—both good and bad. But just fascinating kind of growth and blossoming, really with some tempestuousness as well, given the temperamental artist and all that. There are a lot of very positive things about those years, as well as a lot of difficult things.

Another trip was a trip to Poland, which was also fascinating, again with Sam. He was invited over by USIA to come and do some lecturing in Warsaw, so we went to Warsaw. This was in the early seventies. This was, looks like, before the world changed in many ways. Went to Poland and Yugoslavia and places like that, and many different times, as I said, to France and Italy and England and all those countries.

Moorhus: Where did your girls stay during those trips?

Gilliam: Very often my mother would come to Washington. My mother died in 1979. I always made it a habit to make sure that the girls spent some time with her in the summer, and we almost every Christmas went home. Then very often my family would come up for Easter. So two, three times a year, maybe more, but there would be contact with my family. Mother was very happy when she was asked to come up and stay with the girls.

The other thing was, of course, I had babysitters, too, and they would do some short-term things, but on most of the longer trips, Mother would come. I remember when we went to India, Mother came up. It was kind of a combination of Mother and then the babysitter kind of helping in terms of whatever the girls needed—driving them to school and stuff like that, things that she couldn't do. Then I also had an old friend, Jim and Gail Whitley. They were in so many ways just like family, you know. They would come. I could drop my kids there if I was in a pickle or if I had to stop on a short trip. So it was a combination.

Moorhus: Have you been back to Africa?

Gilliam: I was back in 1985, and also went in '81. 1981 was a short trip, just to Senegal for about a week or ten days. In '85, it was a relatively short trip, but not so short. I was in Egypt and then back in Nairobi, back in Kenya. I was there for the International Women's Conference in 1985. That was really, really very exciting. I was so busy, because I was writing, primarily writing.

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Moorhus: You said she was at the Post for three years?

Gilliam: Three and a half, maybe. Maybe longer. She may have been there as long as five years—four or five years. Maybe as long as four years. I'm not quite sure.

Moorhus: That sounds like a very good one to read.

Gilliam: It will give you a real contrast to me and my experience and my way of handling it and my way of dealing with it. She's very, very angry—very angry, and talks about the white male culture and what it did to her. Part of it is that she came into it. She's a person who was very much in touch with her anger when she got there, who had been a freelance writer, who was in her mid-thirties when she got there, as opposed to me being twenty-three, and who had never worked for a newspaper. So she had never worked in a company, in a corporation, at all, so here you sort of get dropped into all of that then, in the middle of the eighties, which were just real strange times anyway.

Moorhus: Did you talk with any of your daughters about going into journalism?

Gilliam: No. The question is, did I try to encourage them. The answer is no. I didn't try to discourage them, but it was never an interest that they had shown.

Moorhus: You would not have discouraged them, however?

Gilliam: No, even with all the drawbacks, because I think the field is so important, and I think that it's so important to have that diversity. I just think media is such an important part of this whole scheme of things. At the same time, it gets so little scrutiny, really—serious scrutiny—that there's just a whole bunch of little dirty secrets. So I wouldn't have necessarily encouraged my children, but I wouldn't have discouraged them.

My youngest daughter is going to be a filmmaker, is trying to be a filmmaker, so in many ways I think some young people who today are filmmakers might have been journalists twenty years ago.

Moorhus: A different media, but also a way of expressing a point of view and making some statements.

Gilliam: Yes.

Moorhus: Is there anything that I should have asked you, that I haven't?

Gilliam: I must say, our interviews have been separated by such wide spaces of time, I just have not taken the time to read over the interviews.

Moorhus: You'll have time before the video. Then the last question would be, what are some of the satisfactions that you've experienced as a journalist?

Gilliam: The satisfactions are, from the beginning I felt that journalism was the key to a door that would just lead to an incredible number of new and different experiences, and I really have never been disappointed in that. When I find myself getting even slightly stale, I know that it's something I'm doing wrong. It means I am not going out to the source, to people, to contacts, to hearings, to interviews, to new experts, to new sources. It's ever enfolding, ever unfolding, ever expanding.