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Carl Thomas Rowan (August 11, 1925 – September 23, 2000) was a prominent American
journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...
,
author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...
and government official who published
columns A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...
syndicated across the U.S. and was at one point the highest ranking African American in the United States government.


Early life

Carl Rowan was born in Ravenscroft, Tennessee, the son of Johnnie, a cook and cleaner, and Thomas Rowan, who stacked lumber. He was raised in McMinnville, Tennessee, during the Great Depression. Rowan was determined to get a good education. He graduated from Bernard High School in 1942 as class president and valedictorian. After graduating from high school, Rowan worked cleaning porches at a tuberculosis hospital in order to attend Tennessee State College in Nashville. He studied at
Tennessee State University Tennessee State University (Tennessee State, Tenn State, or TSU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, it is the only state-funded historically black university in Tennes ...
(1942–43) and
Washburn University Washburn University (WU), formally Washburn University of Topeka, is a public university in Topeka, Kansas, United States. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs as well as professional programs in law and business. The university enroll ...
(1943–44). He was one of the first African Americans to serve as a
commissioned officer An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer (NCO), or a warrant officer. However, absent ...
in the
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
.


Journalism career

He graduated from
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...
(1947) and was awarded a master's degree in
journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journ ...
from the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...
(1948). He began his career in journalism writing for the African-American newspapers ''Minneapolis Spokesman'' and ''St. Paul Recorder'' (now the ''Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder''). He went on to be a copywriter for '' The Minneapolis Tribune'' (1948–50), and later became a staff writer (1950–61), reporting extensively on the Civil Rights Movement. In a 1964 interview with
Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern ...
for the book '' Who Speaks for the Negro?'', Rowan reflected on his reporting of the civil rights movement, as well as his opinions on the distinctions between the North and the South, prejudices and persecution, and African Americans' political power. From 1966 to 1998, Rowan wrote a syndicated column for the ''
Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...
'' and, from 1967 to 1996, was a panelist on a television program ''Agronsky & Company'', later called '' Inside Washington''; Rowan's demeanor presented the appearance of a fair opponent whose arguments were persuasive and well-balancedhe always came across as the voice of reason.


Montgomery bus boycott

In the late 1950s, Rowan covered the burgeoning civil rights movement in the South, including the 1955
Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social boycott, protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United ...
in Alabama, resulting from
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist. She is best known for her refusal to move from her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, in defiance of Jim Crow laws, which sparke ...
's refusal to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger. As the only black reporter covering the story for a national newspaper, Rowan struck a special friendship with the boycott's leaders, including
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, civil and political rights, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights move ...
When news of an unlikely compromise settlement of the boycott came to Rowan's attention across the Associated Press wire, he notified King, who made quick steps to discredit the story, which was about to appear in a Montgomery newspaper, thus ensuring the continuance of the boycott.


Government involvement

In 1954, Rowan was asked by the State Department to go on a speaking tour across India. He later gave other speaking tours through South and Southeast Asia. These speaking tours were part of U.S. Cold War propaganda efforts which funded leading American figures lecturing abroad. Rowan was selected to speak in India because of their criticism of U.S. treatment of African Americans. In 1961, Rowan was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State by President John F. Kennedy. The following year, he served as a delegate to the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
during the
Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
. Rowan became the U.S. Ambassador to Finland in 1963. In 1964, Rowan was appointed director of the
United States Information Agency The United States Information Agency (USIA) was a United States government agency devoted to propaganda which operated from 1953 to 1999. Previously existing United States Information Service (USIS) posts operating out of U.S. embassies wor ...
(USIA) by President
Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, under whom he had served a ...
. In serving as director of the USIA, Rowan became the first African American to hold a seat on the
National Security Council A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...
and the highest level African American in the United States government. His name appeared on the
master list of Nixon political opponents The master list of Nixon's political opponents was a secret list compiled by US President Richard Nixon's Presidential Counselor Charles Colson. It was an expansion of the original Nixon's Enemies List of 20 key people considered opponents of ...
.


Legacy and death

In 1960, Rowan was denied membership to a club on the grounds that it was racially segregated; this subsequently inspired Joe Glazer to write the song "I Belong to a Private Club".Joe Glazer Sings: Garbage (with the Charlie Byrd Trio)
, released 1980 by Collector Records; liner notes archived at
Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was f ...
; "In 1960, Carl Rowan, a distinguished journalist and government official, was denied membership in one of Washington's most exclusive clubs because he was black. I got mad and wrote this song."
Carl Rowan was a well known and highly decorated journalist. His columns were published in more than one hundred newspapers across the United States. In 1968 he received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary
Doctor of Laws A Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) is a doctoral degree in legal studies. The abbreviation LL.D. stands for ''Legum Doctor'', with the double “L” in the abbreviation referring to the early practice in the University of Cambridge to teach both canon law ...
degree from Colby College. In 1997, he was awarded the
Spingarn Medal The Spingarn Medal is awarded annually by the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for an outstanding achievement by an African Americans, African American. The award was created in 1914 by Joel Elias Spingarn, ...
from the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
. Rowan was a 1995
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
finalist for his commentaries. He is the only journalist in history to win the Sigma Delta Chi medallion for journalistic excellence in three successive years.
Thurgood Marshall Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme C ...
's only interview while serving on the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...
was for Carl Rowan's 1988 documentary. The National Press Club gave Rowan its 1999 Fourth Estate Award for lifetime achievement. On January 9, 2001,
United States Secretary of State The United States secretary of state (SecState) is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The secretary of state serves as the principal advisor to the ...
Madeleine Albright Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright (born Marie Jana Körbelová, later Korbelová; May 15, 1937 – March 23, 2022) was an American diplomat and political science, political scientist who served as the 64th United States Secretary of State, United S ...
dedicated the press briefing room at the State Department as the Carl T. Rowan Briefing room. Rowan died in Washington on September 23, 2000, of heart and kidney ailments in the intensive care unit at Washington Hospital Center. Rowan was 75 and had diabetes prior to his death. Rowan was survived by his wife, Vivien, and the three children they shared: two sons and one daughter. Rowan’s two sons are Carl Jr., a lawyer; and Jeffrey, a clinical psychologist. His daughter, Barbara Rowan Jones, is a formal journalist like her father. Carl Rowan also is survived by four grandchildren.


Project Excellence

Founded in 1987 by Rowan, Project Excellence was a college scholarship program for black high-school seniors who displayed outstanding writing and speaking skills. Rowan founded Project Excellence to combat negative peer pressure felt by black students and to reward students who rose above stereotypes and negative peer influence and excelled academically. Chaired by Rowan, a committee of journalists, community leaders, and school officials oversaw the program. Participants were African-American students in their senior year of high school from public, private, and parochial schools in the metropolitan Washington area, including the
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
and
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
suburbs. By 2000 the program had given out $26 million in scholarship money to over 1150 students.


Shooting controversy

Rowan gained public notoriety on June 14, 1988, when he shot an unarmed teenage trespasser, Ben Smith. "The interloper was a near-naked teenager who had been skinny-dipping with friends in Rowan's pool, and the columnist's weapon was an unregistered, and thus illegal, .22 caliber pistol." From ''People'' magazine: "When Rowan heard the police arrive, he stepped outside to let them in. It was then, he says, that he was confronted by "a tall man who was smoking something that I absolutely was sure was marijuana." Rowan says he repeatedly warned the intruder that he was armed and would shoot. "My first words were: 'Freeze! Stay where you are!' " says Rowan. "Then I said, 'I have a gun.' " Rowan says the man kept coming and that he finally felt forced to shoot in self-defense. He says he aimed at the intruder's feet but hit him in the wrist when the man lunged forward. The intruder, Chevy Chase, Maryland, teenager Benjamin Smith, 18, tells a different story. "I was in my underwear," he told a radio interviewer. "I just climbed out of the pool. It was pretty innocent. I never spoke with him. He just shot me and closed the door and went back hiding in his house. I mean, I guess I was trespassing. But that's no reason to shoot a person, is it? For swimming in their pool?" Rowan was charged for firing a gun that he did not legally own. Rowan was arrested and tried. During the trial, he argued that he had the right to use whatever means necessary to protect himself and his family. He also said the pistol he used was exempt from the District's handgun prohibition law because it belonged to his older son, a former FBI agent. He was accused of hypocrisy, since Rowan was a strict
gun control Gun control, or firearms regulation, is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms and ammunition by civilians. Most countries allow civilians to own firearms, bu ...
advocate. In a 1981 column, he advocated "a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail—period." In 1985, he called for "A complete and universal federal ban on the sale, manufacture, importation and possession of handguns (except for authorized police and military personnel). Rowan was tried but the jury was deadlocked; the judge declared a mistrial and he was never retried. In his autobiography, Rowan said he still favors gun control, but admits being vulnerable to a charge of hypocrisy.More Use Guns In Self Defense


Bibliography

* ''South of Freedom'' (1952) * ''The Pitiful and the Proud'' (1956) * ''Go South to Sorrow'' (1957) * ''Wait till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson'' (1960) * ''Just Between Us Blacks'' (1974) * ''Breaking Barriers: A Memoir'' (1991) * ''Growing up Black: From The Slave Days to the Present - 25 African-Americans Reveal the Trials and Triumphs of Their Childhoods'' (contributor, 1992) * ''Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall'' (1993) * ''The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call'' (1996)


Notes


External links


"Carl T. Rowan"
Answers.com. *
PBS American Experience: The American Diplomat
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowan, Carl 1925 births 2000 deaths American columnists American male journalists 20th-century American memoirists American political writers Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award recipients Tennessee State University alumni Washburn University alumni Oberlin College alumni University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication alumni American gun control activists People from White County, Tennessee Star Tribune people The Washington Post people Ambassadors of the United States to Finland United States Information Agency directors African-American diplomats African-American journalists 20th-century American male writers People from McMinnville, Tennessee 20th-century African-American writers