Inside a newspaper building that once shunned black reporters, 130 people celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

The reception and a panel discussion featuring PABJ founders and early chapter members were held Nov. 19, 2003, in the Public Room at the Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News building in Philadelphia. Filled with black veteran journalists and young aspiring writers and broadcasters, the room was charged with nostalgia, hope and talk of unfinished work.

Journalists who wanted better representation of blacks in news stories and a greater black presence in newsrooms founded PABJ in 1973. They also wanted to establish a social and professional support network for blacks in the business. PABJ was the template for the National Association of Black Journalists, created in 1975.

"We all came together because we believed in something that we didn't find among us here in the city," Paul Bennett, who helped write PABJ's first set of bylaws, said during the panel discussion. "What we tried to do was put together an organization that would be an advocacy group that would advance our issues, that would represent our folks. We had our successes, we had our trials and tribulations."

Acel Moore, who rose from copy boy in 1962 to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter in 1977 to columnist and associate editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and was a PABJ founding member, said there had been previous attempts to organize, including a group called Black Communicators in 1968.

The organizing efforts showed that black journalists knew they had "more impact across the board then what lawyers were doing, what physicians were doing because we were communicating ideas and thoughts," said Moore, who was also one of the founders of NABJ. "And really, the story of black people in America was not being told with accuracy or sensitivity."

In 1973, less than 2 percent of the journalists at daily newspapers were black, Moore said. The percentage in broadcast was "a little higher" because of an edict from the Federal Communications Commission in the late 1960s, but the number hadn't reached double digits, he said.

(According to the American Society of Newspapers Editors survey, blacks made up 5.3 percent of people working in newsrooms in 2002.)

Black journalists believed they could "apply pressure on the industry from within to increase our numbers and tell our story in a more accurate portrayal of what it was to be black and living in American," Moore said.

Francine Cheeks, who was working at WCAU-TV at the time, noted that television pioneers such as Edie Huggins and Trudy Haynes and others "struggled and were alone an awful lot," because there were few other blacks in the field. PABJ was the first group to unite print and broadcast professionals.


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