W h o  W e  A r e

Columnists who 'can and will think black'

By DeWayne Wickham
USA Today/Gannett News Service

The first Trotter Group meeting, Harvard University, 1992: Clockwise from left: Courtland Milloy, Mark August, Les Payne, Wayne Dawkins, Gregory Freeman, Derrick Jackson, Sherman Miller, Dorothy Gilliam, Lorraine Montre, Richard Prince, Donna Britt, Kevin Blackistone, Betty Baye, Peggy Peterman, DeWayne Wickham, Norman Lockman and Wiley Hall. Not pictured: William C. Rhoden.

The idea that a group of black columnists would come together to share our common experience and probe the soft underbelly of our craft is something Les Payne and I kicked around for several years. Whenever an event in the news struck our interest, or pricked our consciences, we'd talk about the need to bring a group of us together.

But given the many daily pressures that come with our jobs, it was painfully easy to let such a grand plan fall by the wayside. It always seemed to lack the immediacy that compels journalists to action.

Two things happened to change that. In January 1992, Derrick Jackson and I went to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to see how the thousands of Haitian refugees who were held there against their will were being treated. Nothing we had read in the many news dispatches from the base prepared us for what we found. The so-called refugee camp was actually a prison camp; encircled by barbed wire and guard towers and full of people who were hostages of the U.S. government. Outraged by what we found, Derrick and I wrote several columns exposing this charade.

Later that year during his presidential campaign, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton promised to end this mistreatment of those fleeing Haiti's despotic government and to give them "refuge and consideration for political asylum until democracy is restored" to that impoverished island nation. Clinton's promise raised the hope that this and other issues of importance to African-Americans might be lifted out of the political bog if he made his way into the White House.

It was these two things — that which Derrick and I saw in Cuba and the real possibility that a change in administrations might focus some badly needed attention on issues of importance to African-Americans — that caused the two of us to join with Les in putting out the call for the first meeting of "The Trotter Group." We wanted to do what we could to ensure that the voices of black columnists would speak the loudest in the debates that would surely follow such a turn of events.

In my letter of invitation to more than 40 black columnists, I used these words of H.L. Mencken to stoke interest in our rallying call: "The Negro leader of today is not free. He must look to white men for his very existence, and in consequence he has to waste a lot of his energy trying to think white. What the Negroes need is leaders who can and will think black."

The Trotter Group held its first meeting at Harvard University in December 1992. In the years since, we have made our existence felt in two White House meetings with President Bill Clinton and high-ranking members of his administration, gatherings with African ambassadors and a fact-finding trip to Cuba.

In its first decade of existence The Trotter Group has shown that the craft of journalism has a cadre of black columnists "who can and will think black."

DeWayne Wickham is a columnist for USA Today and the Gannett News Service.

The Trotter Group: Opening Statement

Developing the black viewpoint

By Les Payne, Newsday

Click here to read Opening Statement