June 6, 2004

BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

I can't get back to business without paying tribute to Vernon Jarrett, the Dean of Black Journalists who passed away May 23 at the age of 84.

I was still out of town, so I wasn't there when Vernon's family, friends and admirers celebrated his amazing life. But I know every seat in the auditorium at Operation PUSH was filled. People from all walks of life respected Vernon. In honoring Vernon, the highbrow and the low-end are linked by an invisible chain forged in history.

White people kept up with Vernon. Black people cared about Vernon. That made him one of the most influential black men in the country. When I arrived at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1991 as an intern, Vernon was a longtime editorial board member and columnist. I interviewed with four or five editors at the paper. No sweat.

But I was intimidated by the very thought of sitting down with Vernon Jarrett. He was on a first-name basis with people I'd met only in the history books. And he knew the date, time and place of every significant event that has affected black people since slavery ended -- every event -- not just the milestones.

Vernon was an icon who entered the profession three years before I was born.

He was a co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, and when Vernon had something to say, everybody else had to shut up and listen.

Still, he was not one of the "black folk" he wrote about so often. He was a well-educated black man who actualized the mandate of W.E.B. DuBois that the race be led by the Talented Tenth.

I thought a man like that would take one look at my grew-up-in-the-projects-went-to-Chicago-public-schools self and deem me unfit to walk in his vocation. But it was more than a decade before Vernon and I actually had a conversation that even touched on my work.

Opening the doors for blacks

Vernon was a prolific writer and researcher who didn't spend his time mentoring younger black print journalists, but his credentials and dedication to professionalism opened the doors for people like me. And he cared passionately about the "miseducation" of black children.

Still, he was slow to scold black people. Instead, Vernon often used living legends to reason with those who seem determined to make matters worse.

For instance, in a column written in 1994, Vernon posed this question:

"Isn't there something that we can learn today from those past generations of remarkable, ordinary black people who were America's poorest, the least educated, the most abused and the least defended?"

He had interviewed Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, retired president of Morehouse College who was then 80 years old, in search of an answer. Mays rose to great prominence despite being born to poor parents 30 years removed from slavery in rural South Carolina, and Vernon wanted to know what he considered to be his people's greatest achievement.

"They came together and rejected all forms of suicide. While they defended themselves as best they could from the injustices, the neglects, the violence and white America's justification of it, their 'greatest achievement' was on another level," Mays said to Vernon.

"The miracle of my people is that under the worst of oppression and degradation, we rejected suicide, whether spiritual or biological or moral or intellectual."

Recognizing students' work

Vernon was aware that there was a difference between him and most of the people he reached. He was a talented little boy from Paris, Tenn., who was blessed enough to have a family and educators who believed in him. Those memories led him to create the Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) in 1977. The program recognizes the accomplishments of high-achieving black students and is now the premier youth program sponsored by the NAACP.

Despite his disappointments, Vernon never gave up on trying to educate the masses of black people.

Last time he and I were on a panel together, it was late on a Sunday afternoon during football season. The crowd was very thin. Accompanied by his ailing wife, Fern, Vernon looked around the room and shook his head. After he seated his wife, he went back outside the building and rounded up people who were walking past the complex. To our surprise, he was successful in persuading a few of them to come inside and listen to us discuss the role of the black press.

That's the Vernon I will always remember. A distinguished, learned man who walked slowly but purposely, cradling a history book like a preacher cradles a Bible.

It was indeed fitting that Vernon's services were held at Operation PUSH. He loved being there. While most media people would be uncomfortable being in the thick of an event they are covering, Vernon was proud to be a part of it all.

I'm told that 1,000 people were at Vernon's funeral. Anyone who knows Vernon knows he would have wanted it that way. Not for him. But for history.