New York Times journalist Samuel Freedman speaks to audience members last Thursday afternoon during the seventeenth annual Shepard Symposium on Social Justice.
Samuel Freedman, author of “Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights,” spoke at UW’s Shepard Symposium Thursday night.
“Breaking the Line” centers on two rival football teams in 1967 that jointly broke the color line and ultimately transformed the National Football League. Because of its focus on the aspirational working in middle class black population, Freedman thinks of “Breaking the Line” as a sequel to one of his previous publications, “Upon this Rock.”
UW faced its own race struggle with The Black 14 in 1969, when 14 black football players were kicked off the team for wearing armbands in silent protest as they played BYU. The players had been victims of racial slurs from BYU players the year before. Head coach Lloyd Eaton instructed the players not to wear armbands, then kicked off the players for the rest of the season when they refused his orders.
“Especially when whites write about blacks there’s a fascination with extreme behavior,” Freedman said. “All these morbid views of what black life is seem to fascinate white folk. What I am moved by are these black people who come from, again, the church-going, college aspiring, working middle class who struggle so mightily both to elevate their families and to make change where they can.”
Born in 1955, Freedman grew up during a time when political issues like the civil rights, anti-war and feminist movements were well underway. His family closely followed those movements, treating The New York Times like a bible.
Freedman says the New York City newspaper strike, lasting for 114 days in 1962-63, was what got him to start reading The New York Times.
“I must have picked up their consternation of being without The Times during the strike, because when the strike was settled I started reading it,” Freedman said. “Just loving to read the paper, being part of all these discussions about current events about the kind of issues we’d now call issues of social justice all happened for me at a very formative age.”
Freedman started out his journalism work in junior high as editor-in-chief and continued that role through high school. In college, he was a reporter and practiced in photography and printing. His first post-college job was at The Daily New Jersey.
It was in 1981 when Freedman embarked on what is now a 31-year journey with The New York Times, working as a freelance journalist for the paper while working in the Chicago suburbs.
After six years, Freedman received a job in news.
Today, he writes a column titled “On Religion” that publishes every other Saturday. As well as publishing non-fiction books and writing for The New York Times, Freedman has written for USA Today, Rolling Stone, Salon, Tablet, and BeliefNet. He has occasionally appeared as a correspondent on PBS in “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.”
When he is not writing, Freedman teaches journalism at Columbia University. His distinguished book writing seminar is offered at the school each spring.
