Word: couriers
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...Courier reaches people that no other paper does, and politicians--whether they are running under the Black Panther or are ardent segregationists--respect it for that, perhaps far more than it really merits. At any rate, any candidate with more than a passing interest in the Negro vote purchased advertising space during last year's campaigns, several tried to court editor Lottman for an endorsement (the Courier has a policy of not endorsing anyone for anything), and a friend of a candidate in next Monday's Montgomery City Commission election primary offered Lottman $500 to print damaging articles...
There were about 100 Negro candidates in last May's Democratic primary, and the Courier was viewing its future--which held out the prospect of warm friends in high places--with unabashed enthusiasm. A couple of days before the vote, editors set into type a jubilant editorial on the power of the Negro vote. It never ran; the ed, framed in black, hangs in the Courier office. All but a handful of Negroes and white liberals were clobbered at the polls...
...powerful friend and attentive reader, then-Attorney General Richmond Flowers, was out of office. (Flowers was interviewing a job applicant last year when his executive assistant recalled seeing the name in the Courier; he dug out the story--a series of chats with friends of Ku Klux Klan Wizard Robert Shelton--showed it to Flowers, and the interview ended abruptly.) A number of federal and state judges and other officials continue to subscribe (Alabama has two subscriptions--one for the state archives, the other for the anti-poverty office), but few are as avid followers of it as was Flowers...
Oddly enough, the segregationists' renewed self-confidence has made the job of Courier reporters, if anything, easier. "People are glad to talk to us," notes Lottman wryly. "They tell us exactly what they're doing...
...that has always been more or less the case. Even ardent "segs" have enjoyed an occasional tete-a-tete with a well-dressed, soft-spoken Courier reporter. (Exception: A team of reporters covering the first civil rights demonstration in Ft. Deposit, not far from Selma, were surrounded by white mobs twice; a county voting examiner smashed an ax handle through their car windshield; and five carloads of toughs followed them out of town.) A drugstore owner in Linden bought a copy of the paper from two reporters, remarking, "Course, I make up my own mind, but I've heard from...