An unprecedented examination of how news stories, editorials and photographs in the American pressand the journalists responsible for themprofoundly changed the nations thinking about civil rights in the South during the 1950s and 60s. Roberts and Klibanoff draw on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmenblack and whiterevealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings that compelled its citizens to act. Meticulously researched and vividly rendered, The Race Beat is an extraordinary account of one of the most calamitous periods in our nations history, as told by those who covered it.From the Trade Paperback edition.