Trailblazer Dorothy Butler Gilliam on the Change America has to Make.

By Lomie Blum, News Editor

The definition of the word trailblazer is “a pioneer” or an “innovator,” someone who creates a path that isn’t there for future generations to walk down. Trailblazer is a perfect word to describe Dorothy Butler Gilliam, the first-ever black female journalist at The Washington Post from 1961 until 2003. Gilliam is also the author of “Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America.” 

On February 4th, Gilliam discussed her experience, racial diversity, and the current and past state of America. Gilliam was a virtual speaker as part of HVCC’s Cultural Affairs Program, Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Student Activities/Student Senate for Black History Month. 

Gilliam’s speech started with an introduction and a clip from an interview she did in 2019 with the late-night commenter, Trevor Noah on the Daily Show. 

In that interview, she discusses the change made when it came to diversity at The Washington Post and journalism in general, going to Civil Rights protests and recalls a story where she had to sleep in a funeral home because there was no hotel for African Americans in Mississippi. She said she “slept with the dead.” 

In the Trevor Noah interview, Gilliam discusses not knowing that she was revolutionary at the time and the importance of black press. “I didn’t think I was a trailblazer at that point. I just was doing a job that I love. I had had four years in the black press and black press has been very important in America, both in terms of reporting on civil rights, but in growing going places where white reporters can go for white newspapers go,” Gilliam said. 

On the Daily Show, Gilliam also talks about the term “fake news.” “It was very difficult when the [former] president started talking about fake news. It was very difficult because those of us who came up in legacy media knew about all of the issues of ethics that we had to adhere to in order to be hired by The Washington Post and in order to work there. We knew that we didn’t take gifts from anybody. We knew that we had always paid our own way. We knew that we had studied in colleges and universities,” Gilliam said. 

After the Trevor Noah interview, Gilliam starts her talk discussing the events of 2020 to now. “I remember when the year started, you started as an ordinary year. But of course, we know that midway through the early in the year we had the pandemic. And then the next thing was the fact that we also had the murder of George Floyd and how that really provoked a Freedom Summer in terms of Black Lives Matter, in terms of the determination to make things in America different,” Gilliam said. 

Gilliam later discusses what changes there needs to be in the United States regarding white supremacy, systemic racism and lack of minority representation in popular culture. 

 “…We’re at a time when we need change, when we need the white leaders in the country to really do and say and think something different when we need the media to really diversify and get and have people from all communities around the table so that they’re that they are really hearing from all these communities and [that] they are also pushing forth those voices because that’s the only way we begin. We really will begin to change the system where white supremacy is so deeply embedded in American society. [It is] so deeply embedded that it’s going to take so much to uproot it…To really make this a democracy, that is really the democracy that our Constitution promises, a democracy that many people in our nation want…A true democracy that begins to let America really be America, because to really make America great is…to really make it truly diversified we’ve got to start really delving deeper and letting this whole issue of white supremacy be the undisputed being honored by all white people who are in a position to make a change by the media taking white supremacy seriously, by, you know, coming forth toward a new America,” Gilliam said. 

Gilliam discusses the challenges that come with progress in America with pushback from members of the Republican party, The Proud Boys and the growing right-wing militia movements that coalesced in the violent insurrection on January 6. Gilliam also talks about how America might be putting too much attention on those pushing back society instead of progressing it further. 

“We have a little forward movement and then the conservative pushback movement. And my hope is that this will be different. But I think it’s going to take a lot of change for that to really be different. Let’s look at the media for a while. I think that certainly, we’ve begun to have more people of color in the media. We’ve begun to be very happy to have Joy Reid on MSNBC. There are few other people who are moving into new positions in the media and people of color. So we’re getting some additional diversity. But I think there’s still too much focus on the voices of the people who are doing damage to society. For example, we will never forget January six when we had the capital overrun by a mob and what happened. I think there has been extremely important pushback on the part of the Democratic Senate and Congress and, of course, President Biden. But when I look at the media today, I’m still seeing that there’s more attention being placed on the people who are home, who are doing damage. They’re still getting much more of a central focus than the people who are really trying, pushing to make this a really a better society. So I have to ask myself, how do we really go forward in America?” Gilliam ponders. 

“How do we really go forward in America?” This is a question posed by many over the United States’ 243-year-old history. 

American novelist, James Baldwin, has a quote about change stating “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” 

What Baldwin suggests is that one or a group of people need to conquer fear around change to see actual progress. America has not quite conquered this fear, and with every action of change, as Gilliam discusses, there is a reaction and often a violent pushback. 

Gilliam discusses America’s high incarceration rate which is among the highest in the world. The majority of prisons and jails house black men. African American men are incarcerated at 5.1% times more than whites. Many argue that the prison system is the “new Jim Crow.” 

Many thought leaders and academics believe that America has a lot of reconciling still to do when it comes to racial justice. The country’s history of racist policy, police brutality and incarceration rates specifically around black men are often cited by the national and international human rights societies as being fraught with racial imbalance.  

It seems as if pushback from progress is as American as Apple Pie. 

Gilliam talked about the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murders of Brianna Taylor and George Floyd, she is hopeful for real change.  

“When things happen like the George Ford murder, because of the technology, people all over the world saw it as well and we began to have change…We began to have these protests by young African-Americans and young white Americans and not so young black and white Americans going out and saying things…Things really must change,” Gilliam said. 

Dorothy Butler Gilliam is as much a trailblazer as she was in the 60s today. Gilliam has and still is standing up for civil rights and women’s rights proudly. Gilliam still discusses the future of America with hope for progress. 

HVCC’s Cultural Affairs Program, Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Student Activities/Student Senate are hosting many more exciting virtual speakers in the coming months which are free for students to attend.