Out Of 'Massa's' House And Building My Own
I must confess to having myself engaged in the practice of “volunteer slavery”—a term coined by former Washington Post journalist Jill Nelson. ...I too must plead guilty to volunteer slavery.
By John W. Fountain
“Some of us take so much pride in being in the massa’s house,” a fellow Black friend and journalist remarked recently during a conversation.
In my best Pentecostal preacher’s cadence: “Let the church say, Amen.”
For I am a witness.
I must confess to having myself engaged in the practice of “volunteer slavery”—a term coined by former Washington Post journalist Jill Nelson in her memoir first published in 1993, two years before I myself arrived as a reporter at the Post from the Chicago Tribune. Let the record now show: I too must plead guilty to volunteer slavery.
But if it is to be said that I ever partook in voluntary servitude in journalism, it must also be said that I was a slave of a different kind.
A subversive. A malcontent. The kind most likely to make waves and stir murmurings amongst the other indentured black hands. I was the kind who could not be trusted to simply shut up and say nothing amid the perpetuation and publication of stories that stereotype and demean Black folk and which continue to help form the tainted narrative of Black life in America.
If I was a slave, I was a slave, not like Friend Stephen. More like Django—without the gun, and without the curse words, though I have witnessed white reporters in the newsroom curse out editors. As a Black male journalist, I could never have gotten away with that. I suspect I would have been corporately lynched or flogged.
Put simply: I was not, over the course of my career, the type to “play the game,” as some of my fellow Black brothers and sisters in servitude had strongly suggested in sheepish tones.
“Make them think you’re an Oreo (black on the outside, white on the inside)” two Black reporters—one male, the other female and who shall remain anonymous—told me while a reporter at the Chicago Tribune.
“I can show you what you need to do to make it here,” a Black male editor at the Washington Post once told me, staring quizzically into my eyes as if almost salivating for me to respond in the affirmative.
“Nah,” I answered, “I’m good, bruh.”
I had told him I thought that all you needed to do in this business was to work hard and do good work. He said it wasn’t. Enough said.
I have long understood that the battle inside the plantation, I mean, uh, corporation, was a war for my Black psyche and soul. And long ago, I reached the conclusion that my perspective and pen as a Black ghetto boy who became a Black man inside some of America’s most storied newsrooms—and my obligation—was not only to the truth, but to never forget who and whose I am.
I also accepted the great responsibility of being a Black journalist, in particular, in an industry that has historically and notoriously fallen significantly short or altogether failed to paint a more wholistic portrait of Black life in America. So I adopted the calling to shine light on stories the news media often neglect or sift through the prism of white American culture and privilege. To be unapologetically Black, even in volunteer slavery.
And yet, I have witnessed some among us who derive our identity from those corporations and institutions to which we too often pledge our undying allegiance. Those among us who have signed away in blood the privilege of freedom for less than golden handcuffs. Those of us who acquiesce to the abating of our dreams and divine destiny for fear of alternatively fleeing the shackles of plantation politics-filled newsrooms and escaping to an independent world of journalism that might be reimagined beyond them. Even if that proposition is admittedly uncertain, sometimes scary, but invigoratingly liberating.
“From the NY Times to the Chicago Crusader?” a former Times colleague in its Chicago bureau, where I was once a national correspondent wrote beneath a photo of my story published in the Crusader last December that I posted on social media.
“The Times was never my destination just transportation,” I wrote back. “It didn't make me. And it sure as hell didn't break me. Just for the record, I was a reporter at the Washington Post on a year-long journalism fellow at the University of Michigan when they came looking for me. And I turned them down several times before I finally said, ‘Yes.’
Neither John B. Russworm and Samuel Cornish nor Frederick Douglass, or Ida B. Wells ever worked for the New York Times. And yet, they all did incredibly impactful journalism that mattered.”
Russworm and Cornish began the inaugural edition of their Freedom's Journal—the first African-American owned and operated newspaper—on March 16, 1827, with a front page that declared: “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”
I continued in response to my former colleague: “Before being hired by the Times, my last interview was with John M. Geddes, then deputy managing editor. He said to me: “John, if we offer you a job and you come here—and I'm pretty sure we're going to make you an offer—I hope that what happens to people after they come here doesn’t happen to you.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“They get a new last name,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked again.
“New York Times,” he answered.
I responded without hesitation: “If I come, I'll be John Fountain when I arrive. And I'll be John Fountain when I leave.
…I’m still John Fountain, whether in the Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Crusader.”
And, for the record, I am grateful and proud to have my work displayed prominently in the 83-year-old Black owned and operated weekly newspaper here in my hometown and whose mantra is affixed to the upper right corner on the front page of every edition: “BLACKS MUST CONTROL THEIR OWN COMMUNITY"
I continued: “So my question is: Are you putting down the Crusader, a Black newspaper, because it’s not The New York Times? Why not call up Mrs. (Dorothy) Leavell (publisher) of the Crusader and tell her what you think…”
I doubt she ever did. At least I sure hope not. For if there’s one thing I know about Mrs. Leavell whom I admire and respect deeply, it’s that she’s a free Black woman—the kind who is likely to freely give you a piece of her mind if you come talking any foolishness.
Me? I might let it slide. Or I just might be inclined to speak my mind—like a freed Black journalist, out of massa’s house, and finally building my own.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN BIOGRAPHY
A native son of Chicago’s West Side, John Wesley Fountain is an award-winning columnist, journalist, professor, publisher and author of True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith, Hope and Clarity; and Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood. A tenured full professor of journalism at Roosevelt University since 2007, he wrote for 13 years a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. As a journalist, Fountain has chronicled the story of murder for more than 30 years, mostly in Chicago. He was a 2021-22 Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, where taught at the University of Ghana at Legon and conducted a research project: “Africa Calling: Portraits of Black Americans Drawn to the Motherland”
He was previously a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications, and is a graduate of Providence-St. Mel School, Chicago.
He has won numerous journalism awards over a nearly 40-year journalism career and is author of five books, including his latest, Soul Cries: In Black & White and Shades of Gray. He is a frequent guest commentator on radio and television.
Fountain’s Fulbright Project Website
