Page 9 - Baltimore_Sun_Editorial

‘Voice of inspiration for millions’

Opinion writers also recognized the genius and dedication of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. —
to a point. They praised his clear plan and commitment to nonviolent civil rights advocacy, but
chafed when he proposed action outside that realm, such as marching in support of home rule for
Washington, D.C., or encouraging resistance to the Vietnam War draft. When King was
assassinated April 4, 1968, the front pages of The Sun and The Evening Sun the next day
underscored the significance, with headlines urging peace and proclaiming the “whole world
stunned.” The editorial board called the assassination a “national tragedy,” noting that King was
“the voice of inspiration for millions.” There was “none other of his stature,” they wrote. The
editorial cartoon that day featured a headstone and King’s name, with the epitaph: “Killed in the
cause of equality.”

By April 6, a violent backlash had begun in
Baltimore and across the nation, with irate
crowds taking to the streets and burning buildings
out of frustration, becoming a backdrop to
congressional consideration of the 1968 Civil
Rights Act. The Sun urged the bill’s passage,
saying that the “public officials who say now that
the bill ought to be defeated because of the riots
are acting like children.”

Like the uprising in 2015 following Freddie
Gray’s death, the 1968 unrest drove news
coverage for months, as officials and media dug
into the issues underlying it. But how much of an
effect it had on Sun coverage going forward is
hard to gauge. The newspaper’s opinions grew
progressively more supportive of racial equality,
though changes within the paper were subtle. The
Sun hired its first Black female journalist in 1973,
but the staff was — and still is —
overwhelmingly white, compared with the
Baltimore Sun 1968 editorial cartoon, makeup of the community; this is especially
following the assassination of the Rev. Martin evident in The Sun’s leadership teams through
Luther King Jr. (The Baltimore Sun)
the years.

By the 1980s, Sun editorials focused on issues of poverty, criminal justice and equal opportunity
in hiring through a lens of race, but they still had an ivory tower quality to them of being written
by someone largely disconnected from the topic. In a December 1981 editorial, writers decried
strict welfare rules that hurt the working poor, but made a point of separating them from people
“on the dole,” seemingly buying into the mythology of the “welfare queen” popularized by
Ronald Reagan during his 1976 presidential campaign.

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