Thomas C. Fleming facts for kids
Thomas Courtney Fleming (born November 29, 1907 – died November 21, 2006) was a very important African American journalist on the West Coast. For 61 years, starting in 1944, he worked as an editor, reporter, and writer for black newspapers in San Francisco. He began his career as the first editor of the Reporter, which was the only black newspaper in the city at that time.
In 1948, the Reporter joined with another newspaper called the Sun to become the Sun-Reporter. Thomas Fleming's good friend, Dr. Carlton Benjamin Goodlett, who was a doctor and a civil rights leader, published this newspaper. The Sun-Reporter was San Francisco's main black newspaper throughout Fleming's career and is still published every week today.
Fleming stopped being the main editor of the Sun-Reporter in 1997, but he kept writing columns until 2005. When he was 90 years old, he became famous across the country. His series of articles, "Reflections on Black History," was shared with over 200 black newspapers. After he passed away, his life stories were put into a book called In the Black World.
Fleming reported on many big national political events and met famous black thinkers and celebrities. These included Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He received many awards for his work, including a special award for his long career in journalism. On his 90th birthday, the California State Assembly honored him as the oldest and longest-working journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Early Life and First Jobs
Thomas Fleming was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1907. His grandmother, who he believed was once enslaved, raised him first. After she died, he lived with his father in New York City for a few years. Then, he moved to Chico, California, to live with his mother and sister.
After finishing high school in Chico, he moved to the Bay Area. From 1926 to 1932, he worked as a waiter on ships and as a cook on trains. When the Great Depression made it hard to find jobs, he went to Chico State College. He didn't finish his degree there. In 1934, he wrote for the Oakland Tribune for a short time. This made him the only black journalist working for a daily newspaper on the West Coast at that time. Later that year, he started writing for free for the Spokesman, a black newspaper in San Francisco.
Starting His Newspaper Career
In 1935, Thomas Fleming got a job with the Federal Writers' Project at the University of California, Berkeley. When World War II began, he started working as a machinist for the U.S. Navy. His big chance came in June 1944. He met a man on the street in San Francisco who told him about Frank Logan, a local black businessman. Logan wanted to start a black newspaper called the Reporter and needed an editor. Fleming offered to do the job without pay. For the next year, he worked at the Naval shipyard at night and reported for the newspaper during the day.
Fleming was upset that the Key System, which ran the buses and streetcars in Oakland, would not hire any black drivers. He wrote articles saying that if black people could drive big army trucks, they could drive buses too. People were protesting outside the Key System's office, holding signs against unfair hiring rules, also known as "Jim Crow practices."
In February 1945, even though he was the only one supporting his sick mother and was older than the age limit, Fleming was drafted into the U.S. Army. A woman at the draft office secretly told him, "They don't like those articles you're writing." He served in the army for seven months, then returned to his newspaper job. In 1947, he was chosen for a special program that gave scholarships to veterans. Through this program, he worked as an intern in the office of Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, who later became the Governor of California. He continued his newspaper work at the same time.
The Sun-Reporter Years
Thomas Fleming's closest friend since 1935 was Carlton Goodlett. Goodlett was a smart African American scholar who became a doctor. During World War II, San Francisco's black population grew a lot. Fleming encouraged Goodlett to come back to the Bay Area and start his medical practice there. Goodlett did, and he became very successful. He invested a lot of money in the Reporter newspaper.
Fleming's career grew even more after Goodlett won the Sun newspaper in a poker game and decided to combine the two papers. Later, Goodlett also added a black newspaper from Oakland, the California Voice, and created the Reporter Publishing Company.
The partnership between Goodlett and Fleming gave a voice to all the major civil rights fights in San Francisco. They wrote about unfair hiring in the police and fire departments, public transportation, hotels, and car dealerships. They also covered unfair treatment by hospitals, landlords, the city government, and the media. They reported on police violence and how the city's main black neighborhood was being torn down by a program that many black residents called "Negro removal."
Fleming got the inside story on many big events. These included the city's race riot in 1966 and the student strike at San Francisco State University, which led to the first ethnic studies department in the country in 1969. He also covered the Jonestown tragedy in November 1978, where many lives were lost.
The Sun-Reporter became politically powerful in 1949. That year, Cecil F. Poole became San Francisco's first black district attorney after the newspaper supported him. Later, Poole was appointed to a high court, which was a first for an African American in Northern California.
In the 1960s, the newspaper helped Terry Francois become the first African American elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Over the years, many people running for office, both black and white, visited the Sun-Reporter offices to ask for their support.
In 1962, because of Fleming's suggestion, Ben Williams, who used to work at the Sun-Reporter, was hired by the San Francisco Examiner. He became the first African American reporter for any daily newspaper in the Bay Area. Belva Davis, the first African American female television reporter on the West Coast, also started her journalism career at the Sun-Reporter.
Later Years and Legacy
Carlton Goodlett passed away in 1997. That same year, the address of San Francisco City Hall was renamed 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place by Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr.. The Sun-Reporter had helped start Willie Brown's political career.
From 1963 to 1997, Fleming worked at the Sun-Reporter building in San Francisco's Fillmore district. He wrote articles, took phone calls, and greeted visitors. But in April 1997, when the newspaper moved to the Bayview district, which had become the city's largest African American neighborhood, Fleming retired from his daily duties. He continued writing at home on an old-fashioned typewriter. Over the years, he wrote about 2,500 words each week, totaling around eight million words in print.
His writings on black history and his status as the oldest working black journalist in the country brought him new fame. He was invited to speak at colleges, bookstores, libraries, and community groups. He was interviewed for several documentaries and featured in major newspapers across California.
Fleming grew up at a time when black journalists had few chances to work for white-owned newspapers. But when he retired, he said he had no regrets about spending his whole career with the black press. He said, "I was a good soldier. I was more interested in reaching one of my goals – to make sure we had a black newspaper here in San Francisco." He cared more about his goals than about making a lot of money.
Fleming continued writing columns for the Sun-Reporter until December 2005, when he was 98 years old. He never married and lived alone in his San Francisco apartment, cooking for himself. In his last year, he moved to a retirement center in San Leandro, California. He passed away there from heart failure on November 21, 2006.
Thomas C. Fleming's personal papers, including photos, awards, writings, and newspaper clippings about his life as a journalist, are kept at the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, California. Anyone can visit and see this collection.
