Never in My Wildest Dreams

Zusatztext 57530452 Informationen zum Autor Belva Davis with Vicki Haddock Klappentext Belva Davis recounts her remarkable journey from Monroe, Louisiana, up through the black radio industry in Oakland to become an award-winning news anchor known as the Walter Cronkite of the Bay Area. Never in My Wildest Dreams is a memoir with a message. Raised in a dysfunctional family in Louisiana and the San Francisco Bay area, Belva Davis rose through the black radio industry, became the first black female reporter west of the Mississippi with her hiring at KPIX, and eventually anchored KQED's "Evening Edition," the station's nightly news show. Overcoming personal and career obstacles, Davis reported on some of the era's most explosive stories, including the rise and fall of the Black Panthers, the Jonestown massacre, and the Moscone/Milk murders. The book also recounts Davis's interviews with world leaders, including Fidel Castro and three U.S. presidents.What the Hell Are You Niggers Doing in Here? I could feel the hostility rising like steam off a cauldron of vitriol: floor delegates and gallery spectators at the Republican National Convention were erupting in catcalls aimed at the press. South of San Francisco, people were sweltering inside the cavernous Cow Palace, which typically hosted rodeos. In July of 1964 it offered ringside seats for the breech birth of a right-wing revolution. My radio news director, Louis Freeman, and I lacked credentials for the press boxactually we knew that some whites at this convention would find our mere presence offensive. Although Louis was brilliant and had a deep baritone voice and a journalism degree, his first boss had warned Louis he might never become a radio reporter because Negro lips were too thick to pronounce polysyllabic words. But Louis, whose enunciation was flawless, eventually landed an on-the-hour news slot on KDIA-AM, the Bay Area's premier soul-gospel-jazz station; and he was determined to cover the convention. It was said that the national press was flocking to the GOP confab to report Armageddon. Louis wanted to be at the crux of the story, relaying to our black listeners all the news that white reporters might deem insignificant. I was the station's intrepid ad traffic manager, a thirtyone-year-old divorced mother of two, who had no journalism training. No question Louis would have preferred a more formidable companion: I'm delicately boned and stand merely five foot one in stockings. But I was an eager volunteer. More to the point, I was his only volunteer. And I was, in his words, a moxie little thing. He had finagled two spectator passes from one of the black delegatesthey made up less than 1 percent of convention participants. So there we were, perched in the shadows under the rafters,scribbling notes and recording speeches, mistakenly presuming we had found the safest spot to be. Day One of the convention had been tense but orderly. GOP organizers had strictly instructed delegates to be on their best behavior for the television cameras, and they had complied. Day Two would be different. Day Two was starting to spin out of control. Indeed, the Party of Lincoln was ripping apart before our eyes. Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, a flinty firebrand whose ruggedly chiseled face would have rested easy on Mount Rushmore, had tapped into a mother lode of voter anxiety about Communism, crime, and especially civil rights. His followers came prepared to jettison the party's moderate wing, and they were spurred on by Goldwater's fantasy of sawing off the Eastern Seaboard to let it float out to sea. The press noted that he could win the nomination by coalescing the right and attracting fringe groups such as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, and reporters were openly questioning whether the party was on the verge of being taken over by extremists. So when former presi...

ldquo;I was not asked to write a blurb for Up From Slavery, War and Peace, or The Fire Next Time, but gladly I can say Never in My Wildest Dreams is a very important book. No people can say they understand the times in which they have lived unless they have read this book.”
—Dr. Maya Angelou

“Belva Davis has lived this country’s history as only a brave black woman could and has witnessed it as a journalist with a world-class head and heart. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to read her words without becoming a better and braver person.”
—Gloria Steinem

“Never in My Wildest Dreams shows what it really takes to succeed as a black woman in the journalistic world in America. A must read.”
—Willie L. Brown, Jr., Chairman and CEO, Willie L. Brown Institute and former Mayor of San Francisco

"This fascinating book is a must-read for all and a welcome addition to the history of journalism."
—American Journalism

“After a friendship of over thirty years, it’s astonishing to find from this reveal- ing, heartbreaking, and inspirational book that I knew so little about the pro- found and historic forces that shaped Belva’s life.”
—Phil Bronstein, Editor-at-Large, Hearst Newspapers

“An engaging memoir that includes not only a fascinating childhood and com- ing-of-age in the deep south and the Oakland projects, but also involvement in some of the most important happenings of the mid-20th century.”
—School Library Journal

“The remarkable odyssey of Belva Davis is a compelling testament to tenacity and truth. As a pioneering black journalist, she was determined to tell the sto- ries that mainstream news outlets had ignored for too long—and she devoted her career to ensuring that the voices of all Americans became part of our na- tional conversation. This fiercely honest memoir reveals that her struggle was never easy, but helping change the world never is.”
—Andrew Young, Former Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of GoodWorks International, LLC

“Risk-averse people do not make good journalists. Belva Davis entered the pro- fession during the 1960s when virtually every good story required risk-taking. Belva has lived on the edge of history over the last fifty years in some of its most dangerous places. And she got the stories, including her own. Never in My Wildest Dreams is the chronicle of her march through the second half of the twentieth century as a great black woman journalist.”
—Howard Dodson, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

“Good writing is a combination of two things: good thoughts and good prose. Belva Davis tops that. She gives us tough journalism clothed in the tender lyri- cism of a true poet who journeys to the depth of the human heart.”
—Abigail Rosen McGrath, Founder of Renaissance House

“An engrossing account of triumph over adversity. Never in My Wildest Dreams is a valuable contribution to the pre- and post-WWII history of blacks in the Bay Area and a fascinating exploration of the determination that carried Belva Davis far beyond her impoverished childhood and local reporting work to the ranks of the nation’s most respected journalists.”
—Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, Professor Emerita, University of California at Berkeley

"She clawed her way into the white male-dominated news industry, climbing her way up despite the most unlikely of profiles: black, female, short of stature, equipped with a soft voice and no college degree, for years herself a single mother.....As a woman and an African-American, Davis said she always felt the pressures of blazing a trail for others. She constantly worked to master her emotions, in order to present the public face of the consummate professional newswoman— confident, imperturba…