By Deb Van Tassel Warner

On the southeast side of the corridor leading to the editorial board offices at 44 E.  Exchange St. sat a windowless room decorated top to bottom, walls, floor and upholstery, in deep shades of red.

Akron Beacon Journal employees referred to the room, neither surprisingly nor creatively, as the Red Room. Reporters took advantage of its privacy to conduct interviews, hold confidential conversations and have spirited discussions over brown bag lunches about the craft of writing. Editors used it for planning and training sessions, to deliver performance reviews, and occasionally to melt down privately from stress.  No one remembers who deemed red suitable for the room’s purpose. But as our cafeteria had been decorated in blue tones (yes, we called it the Blue Room!) in the same renovation, some decision-maker must have thought red was just the ticket. 

On an auspicious day in mid-1992, seven staffers occupied the Red Room for an entire shift, not to be interrupted, to brainstorm ideas for a project on race relations, an initiative that two years later would win the newspaper the prestigious Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal.

The idea hatched after the April 29, 1992, trial verdict clearing four white Los Angeles police officers in the brutal, videotaped beating of Rodney King. Gathering community reaction, the Beacon had run a story of a white woman in Canton holding up a sign that simply said: “I’m sorry.”

For Black Americans, the verdict “underscored . . . the years of unfair treatment by police and the criminal justice system,” reporter Yalinda Rhoden recalled. It triggered a series of arguments between Rhoden and Assistant City Editor David Hertz, including a debate over which was more horrific, American slavery or the Holocaust.

“To me, anti-Semitism and racism have a great deal in common,” Hertz said. “I became convinced that the ABJ should examine race relations in our community and help the residents come to grips with racism.”

Hertz took the idea to senior editors, who called a meeting for input and buy-in from the entire newsroom. The staff packed into the hallowed John S. Knight conference room, and Hertz led the discussion.

“I was petrified,” he said. A relative newcomer to the Beacon, 30-year-old Hertz was then one of the youngest editors on staff.

Everyone supported the concept, but agreeing on the project’s scope proved contentious. A few staffers argued that any examination of race relations must include Akron’s suburbs and other minority groups. Most favored limiting the project to blacks and whites in Akron only. The rationale was twofold: The predominantly white suburbs would not illustrate the issues underpinning racial tension; and blacks formed Akron’s largest minority group. After all, the impetus was a black man’s beating at the hands of white cops. 

At the time, the decision seemed to make sense. We knew it would be an enormous undertaking requiring deft management and skillful diplomacy to keep newsroom egos on task. Today, some of us would certainly support a broader approach. Ignoring Akron’s other minority groups ran counter to the project’s goal, which was to foster inclusivity. 

After a second staff discussion, Editor Dale Allen advised Hertz to pick a smaller but diverse cross-section of newsroom talent to sharpen the focus. Offering the black perspective were reporter Rhoden, local columnist Carl Chancellor and editorial writer Laura Ofobike. For the white perspective were projects editor Bob Paynter, copy editor Sarah Vradenburg and myself, then the Sunday news editor.

That’s how we landed in the Red Room for eight intense, emotional hours, launching the discussion with the experiences that had shaped our own attitudes about race. We challenged and teased each other. We were variously loud, angry, contemplative, sorrowful, joyful, tearful, confrontational. We stayed in the room for lunch, leaving only for bathroom breaks. At the end of the day, no one was dry-eyed.

I told of growing up in a lily-white, working-class suburb in New Jersey, where my interactions with blacks were mostly positive. The worst racially motivated incident in my lifetime happened after I moved to Akron in 1982. I was driving through a benighted area of North Hill when a young black man threw a lit cigarette through my car window and called me a white bitch. I learned to drive through the ’hoods with doors locked and windows closed.

Akron also delivered my most illuminating epiphany about race, at a baby shower for Yuvonne Bruce, a black reporter who would become the copy editor on the project, at the Highland Square home of Cristal Williams, a black assistant editor. There were as many whites as blacks at the party when it began in the afternoon. By nightfall, the group had shrunk to about six or eight dedicated card players. I was the only white person.

I never felt unsafe. These were my friends, my colleagues. But I did wonder how I would feel if I were the only white in a group of blacks I did not know. Then I realized this uncertainty about safety, about how one will be treated, is what my black friends must experience most days of their lives as minorities in this country.

Rhoden, a versatile and gutsy newswoman as well as a good friend, chuckled, and said something to this effect: You’re right about that. When I started here I was covering northern Summit County. No one looks like me there.

A graduate of Akron’s Central-Hower High School and Ohio Wesleyan University, Rhoden was the youngest in the room. Family members had strong ties to the rubber companies and ran a funeral business. She provided invaluable context, having witnessed firsthand the demographic shifts along Copley Road and Hawkins Avenue, the near west side, North Hill and other neighborhoods as tire jobs, Akron’s economic spine, vanished.

She broke into tears recalling how one of her best friends in childhood, a white girl, told her they couldn’t play together any longer.

Hertz, a native of Shaker Heights, recalled how older black students would try to shake down the younger white kids every day at lunch time at Woodbury Junior High School.  “I had to figure out a way to fool these kids, as they were much bigger than I. So I bluffed and told them I had no money, even though I did. I saw this as a racial thing, as everyone I sat with was white. … For years after I told this story, Carl Chancellor and I would joke about it. Every so often, he would come up to me and ask me for my lunch money.”

So many years later, it is impossible to capture all we discussed that day. I am not the best person to be writing this chapter. I had been the business editor for about five years when Stuart Warner, my husband, got promoted to deputy managing editor, overseeing business and local news. As I could not report to him, I was named Sunday news editor, a new position without portfolio. Heck, for months I didn’t even have a dedicated seat.

I no longer created content or directed reporters, which is what I do best. I worked Tuesday through Saturday to plan and design the big Sunday paper, as well as elections and special sections. Mine were the last eyes on major projects, checking mainbars, sidebars, headlines, captions, page toppers, pull quotes, photos and graphics, before they went into the paper. That was my contribution for the first three installments of A Question of Color, a five-part series. But I was never comfortable in the role and left for The Seattle Times in September, before the series concluded at the end of 1993. Stuart stayed in Akron to see the project through. Key people involved in the day-to-day wrangling were not available to author this chapter.

Here is what I have reconstructed from my memories, Beacon Journal archives and interviews: We agreed to do something ambitious and important and with impact. It would be expensive. We would examine black/white relations in Akron, a city where African Americans made up 25 percent of the population. We would inform our reporting using Census data and professionally managed focus groups of blacks and whites. We would ask for polling money for the University of Akron to survey city residents about race, pivoting off the 30^th anniversary of  Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. We would use the polling, focus groups and Census data to drill down into what we suspected would emerge as “hot-button issues”: education, economic opportunity, crime and punishment, and housing. Hertz suggested  a community component.

I proposed that the focus groups be racially mixed but got roundly shouted down; my colleagues said that blacks and whites would hold back if we put them in the same room at the same time. To accomplish anything at all, they said, we needed to create a safe environment for people to discuss their feelings candidly. Ultimately, we decided on three focus groups for each installment – one white, one black, and one mixed to be drawn from members of the first two groups.

Paynter, the venerable and highly decorated projects editor who introduced computer-assisted reporting to the Beacon newsroom, drew up a comprehensive proposal for Allen’s review.  Always supportive of big-picture projects with a strong sense of place, Allen signed off quickly.

Allen anointed Paynter to lead the project. He began working on the survey and drafting reporters, one black, one white, for each topic. Officially, Paynter had carte blanche to ask for anyone he wanted and reached into the features, sports, business and local news departments. In reality, Stuart conducted delicate negotiations with more than one territorial editor. Fine writers who should have been chosen were not. Some could not be spared; others were casualties of hoary grudges.

The final team, however, a diverse collection of 29 writers, editors, photographers and artists, did superb work. Assistant Managing Editor Susan “Mango” Curtis oversaw the design and graphics. Chancellor and feature writer/columnist Bob Dyer sat in on the focus groups with Assistant Managing Editor Doug Oplinger and wrote for all but one installment, kicking off with “30 Years After the Dream.” Paynter often shared a byline. Other writers were Leona Allen, Carole Cannon, Sheryl Harris, Michael Holley, Colette Jenkins, Kevin Johnson, Ron Kirksey, David Knox, Steve Love, Maura McEnaney, Bill O’Connor and Will Outlaw. Also rotating onto the team were news editor Gloria Irwin; photographers Mike Cardew, Lew Stamp, Paul Tople and Jocelyn Williams; and artists Chuck Ayers, John Backderf, Deborah Kauffman, Art Krummel and Terence Oliver.

I started styling prototypes with my dear friend Mango, who has one of the best eyes for design in the business.  After hours of mocking up, which involves placing dummy type, photos and graphics on a full-page grid, I would unveil my work for her. In the blink of an eye, she would have suggestions for improvement: Change that font. Make that bold. Use two-line subheads. Lose this. Add that.

Another huge talent in the art department was its director, Krummel, who created the project’s signature composite of a black-and-white face forming a ragged, ill-fitting puzzle, plus templates for all the infographics. 

The project gestated during an interregnum of managing editors. Jim Crutchfield had left to be editor in Long Beach, Calif. Allen was searching for his replacement. The steadying presence of a managing editor might have prevented the blow-up that occurred during a status meeting before the first part was published in February of 1993,  but probably not.

Mango and I simultaneously mentioned that we had to go beyond traditional reporting and somehow make a lasting, meaningful statement. We didn’t want to do another big-ass spectacular package that landed with acclaim, won awards for reporting and design, then went nowhere. The novel concept of public journalism was invading newsrooms nationwide, for better and worse.  Journalists either hated it or loved it.

Paynter hated it. He is a brilliant, ballsy, compassionate, dedicated journalist with a large personality and a mind for detail.  He began to bristle as I was speaking.

“No fucking way are we doing anything that makes us part of the story. That’s not our job,” he said, or something like.

Mango and I pushed back hard, begging Paynter to let us talk our ideas through, maybe with a larger group. We screamed at each other. Finally, Mango and I shrugged and left. There was no point in staying if we wouldn’t be heard.

Stuart watched it all quietly from a seat in the corner. He thought the idea had merit. He also understood Paynter’s resistance. He described the shouting match to Allen, who enjoyed an occasional donnybrook and probably regretted missing this one.  Most important, he appreciated what Mango and I wanted and figured out how to do it. 

The solution, he told Stuart the next day, came to him in the middle of the night. The Beacon  would bring in a number of prominent people from the community and put the question to them:  “How could we take A Question of Color beyond the reporting?”  He invited 10 or so business and political leaders and Stuart, a former religion writer, reached out to the same number of religious folks and social activists.  

“I can’t remember who all was there,” Stuart said.  “Deputy Mayor Dorothy Jackson and the Rev. Knute Larson (pastor of The Chapel) for sure … but a robust discussion took place.  I remember the saintly Dorothy saying, ‘The Beacon should be the facilitator, should bring people to the table, but then get out of the way and let them decide a course of action.’ That’s what happened and that’s how the Coming Together part of the project was born.” 

Allen also built a firewall: None of the reporters or editors working on A Question of Color, except Stuart, the project’s supervisor, would be involved in Coming Together.

“Solomon had indeed split the baby in two,” Stuart said.

A Question of Color was published in five, multi-day installments from February 1993 to December 1993. Day One opened with this introduction: “Many whites are tired of hearing about it. Most blacks wish it would go away. All seem powerless to move it…. Thirty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described his dream of a colorblind America, race seems as huge and divisive a force as ever.”  

The project concluded in January of 1994 with a 12-page supplement bearing the names of more than 20,000 readers who accepted the newspaper’s pledge to fight racism.

That was also the beginning of Coming Together Akron, the non-profit formed through private and corporate memberships.  While it operated, CTA sponsored overseas missions to Africa and an annual race walk, as well as workshops, forums, and theatrical and musical events to raise awareness of Akron’s diversity. It lasted almost 15 years, dissolving in January 2008 when it ran out of money.

In 1997, though, CTA was still going strong. Citing its success, President Bill Clinton launched his national conversation on race with a Town Hall meeting at the University of Akron on Dec. 3, 1997. The choice was controversial – critics said the Midwest was too white and Akron was too small – but Clinton’s visit did boost Coming Together’s profile beyond Northeast Ohio. In a short time, numerous cities expressed an interest in developing local efforts, recalled longtime director Dr. Fannie Brown, and CTA became a model for a national project, Coming Together USA.

“I would estimate in excess of 3 million people were touched by the organizations,” Brown said.

Sadly, hard feelings linger over the newsroom’s management of A Question of Color. Some resentment is justified, some not. A black reporter said her editor blocked her from rotating into the project, yet forced her to turn over her contacts among business leaders to a white reporter. Badly done! Another reporter, a white man, sniped recently on social media, “While you guys were working on race, the rest of us were putting out the paper.” Nonsense!

For the record, Paynter was the only one who worked exclusively on race – the project wouldn’t have succeeded without someone’s full-time attention. The rest of us, while hitting our marks on race, also were putting out the rest of the paper. I know. We still had a composing room with printers and engravers for cold-type production. And that’s where I was every Saturday night as printer Mike Jewell placed type and photos on Page One and the A section. Deputy News Editor Tom Moore and I stayed well after midnight when the presses started rolling, to give the paper – every section – a final check, usually wrapping around 1 in the morning.

The Pulitzer Board awarded the 1994 Gold Medal for Meritorious Public Service not to named individuals but to the Akron Beacon Journal, for the newspaper’s “broad examination of local racial attitudes and its subsequent effort to promote improved communication in the community.”  Everyone in the newsroom made it happen and shares the kudos, now as then.  Stuart and I were both in Seattle by then, in another time zone. Paynter and I traded congratulatory voicemails. Stuart called Allen, who told us to have a celebratory dinner and send him the bill.

Examining race relations has proven to be a prize-winning formula for newspapers. In an ironic twist, the New York Times wrote of the black/white divide in the Beacon’s own newsroom as part of a series on contemporary racial attitudes across America. That series won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Has any of it made a difference? Carl Chancellor wonders, “So here we are 56 years since Dr. King’s iconic March on Washington;  25 years since the Beacon’s last Pulitzer Prize; in the wake of Tamir Rice, Ferguson, Missouri, Mother Emanuel Charleston Church Shooting, Black Lives Matter, Orlando Castillo, Eric Garner, Charlottesville, [Colin] Kaepernick, Trump, and the question still remains to be answered: What becomes of a dream too long deferred?”

Fannie Brown thinks it would be worthwhile to revive Coming Together Akron.

“Many acknowledge the need for it and offer accolades for the work we were able to accomplish,” she said. “I can easily say it was the most important work of my life.  The students we worked with continually share with me that  diversity-related concepts learned as a part of the project have and will continue to govern the way they live their lives.

“What can top that?