This week The St. Louis American celebrates its 85th anniversary of uninterrupted community journalism, with the pledge to this community that we will continue to pay our legacy forward with this newspaper, our website stlamerican.com, in social media and mobile applications, and anywhere else people choose to receive information. We do this on the same week our friend James H. Buford delivered his final annual report to his board at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis after 28 years of service, in a tribute to Jim where Urban League supporters also pledged their continued support to the agency’s mission.
Andy Taylor, CEO of Enterprise, said that if you’re drafting a team of civic leaders, Jim Buford is a first-rounder. Given that Jim is now retiring, we have to accept the fact that a franchise player is leaving the field. We expect, like many great players before him, that Jim will coach. National Urban League President Marc Morial paid Jim the respect of traveling to St. Louis for his final annual meeting. We know that Morial, a splendid leader in his own right, hopes to entice Buford into consulting – that is, coaching – with the national office. We also expect to continue to hear from Jim in the broadcast booth, as it were, delivering the occasional commentary in these pages. His being honored as the 2012 St. Louis Citizen of the Year means he has also, in effect, been voted into the civic leadership Hall of Fame.
If we may, we would also like to share another very personal milestone with the community that supports this newspaper so loyally. Yesterday was the first time we observed the birthday of Donald M. Suggs II with Donald no longer here with us to answer the phone, accept well wishes or a visit. Donald II is never far from our thoughts, but we were often reminded of him and his extraordinary gifts while preparing the 85th Anniversary edition of this newspaper. We were very fortunate to have Donald II as a reporter in the mid-1980s, and it has been enlightening and deeply moving to encounter again his work in these yellowing pages.
We found Donald II doing something this community still expects us to do, namely, take to task the local mainstream media for its frequent ignorance and dismissiveness of our community and its concerns. In October 1985 Donald II wrote incisively about the great Harry Belafonte instituting a press ban and boycott of St. Louis after a Post-Dispatch reporter ignorantly criticized his calypso record as “too exotic” and upbraided the civil rights activist for using his music as a public platform for change in touring with South African artist Letta Mbulu, who spoke against apartheid from the stage. As Belafonte told Donald II, ignorant observers like that Post critic are only “walking smack into the face of history, which will contradict them.”
It is this newspaper’s history of providing such necessary voices to our community that we pledge to continue, today, in the name of Jim Buford, but especially in the name of Donald M. Suggs II.
