Columbia Center for Oral History Portal > Oral history interview with Calvin Jacox, 1971.Biographical NoteCalvin Jacox was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on September 12, 1923. He attended Booker T. Washington High School and the Norfolk division of Virginia State College (now Norfolk State University) before earning a degree in Journalism from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1948. He took a job as a reporter at the Norfolk Journal and Guide and returned to his hometown. In the years following, Jacox was promoted to the position of sports editor at the paper and became the voice of sports for the black community in the region. He covered a variety of teams and athletes at the amateur, collegiate, and professional levels across the region and nation. Jacox used his position to fight against discrimination and rally for the breakdown of racial barriers within the athletic world as well as within larger social and political spheres. Jacox wrote for the Journal and Guide for 25 years. In 1973, Jacox took a position as a public information officer at his alma mater, the historically black Norfolk State University, where he served for 15 years, until his death in 1988.
Scope and ContentsJacox briefly discusses: his education; his training in carpentry; his decision to pursue a career in journalism; his early interest in sports and introduction to black newspapers. Jacox traces the successes of the black press and re-imagines the present without the influence of black newspapers. He also discusses the growing problems of the black press at the time of the interview, including recurring personnel shortages, a lack of funding, increasing competition with the white press and daily papers, a loss of readership to television programs, the limits of family-run papers, common misperceptions of black papers, and a reluctance and/or inability to modernize. Still, Jacox also emphasizes the enduring successes of the black press and the continued need for ethnic newspapers.
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