Band of Sisters Survived and Thrived at Washington Post

By Bobbi Bowman

I attended the funeral of a D-Day veteran last month. Lester Lease landed in the hell of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, D-Day.

A week later I attended the funeral of a veteran of another kind of war, Marcia Slacum Greene.

Lester belonged to a band of brothers who in their youth survived Omaha Beach, the battles of Normandy, France, and finally Germany. Marcia, first black woman to be city editor of the Washington Post, was a member of a band of sisters who survived that newsroom and, by extension, newsrooms across the United States.

That sisterhood of black women gathered with Marcia's friends and family at her funeral and memorial service. Some of us didn't know Marcia well, but we felt compelled to be there because in our youth, we fought a war together that forged special bonds between the first three generations of black women journalists at the Washington Post.

Dorothy Gilliam is the mother of us all. She started at the Post in 1961, when she was the only black woman in the newsroom. I became a journalist in part because I read Dorothy's stories in the Post, my hometown newspaper.

Alice Bonner, Wanda Lloyd, Jackie Trescott, and I were the second generation. Michel Martin, Sandee Gregg, Gwen Ifill, Athelia Knight, Deborah Heard, and Marcia were among the third generation.

The furnace that was the Washington Post newsroom forged our sisterhood. We spent our youth fighting battles for acceptance, recognition and respect in a newsroom that honed sharp elbows, rewarded naked aggression, institutionalized rugged individualism and anointed white men to succeed.

Robert McCartney, former Washington Post metro editor, shared a telling story at Marcia's memorial service. He needed to hire a city editor. When he interviewed Marcia, then an assistant city editor, for the job, he told her that she was a good reporter who knew the city well and a good writer. But his vision of a good editor was (white) brash, 'large'-someone more like him.

Marcia's response, said Bob: ''Still waters run deep,' and that's all she said.'

That's how the Post looked at us black women. We were good journalists. But not quite management material-we were either too nice or too pushy.

An exodus began of black folks, led by the black women, looking for better opportunities. Alice and Wanda left first, for better jobs at the infant USA TODAY.

Michel Martin, Gwen Ifill and Michele Norris left and became broadcast stars.

Marcia stayed. As an assistant city editor she supervised coverage that won a Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. The graduate of the Maynard Institute's management program at Northwestern University also won the city editor's job. She joined a still tiny group of women journalists of color who slowly, very slowly moved through the minefields of newsrooms to reach jobs of importance and influence.

Deborah Heard, also of the third generation at the Post, became the first black woman AME when she headed the Style section.

The fourth generation continues to succeed, slowly: Shirley Carswell, Deputy Managing Editor, the first black woman on the Post's masthead; Lynn Duke, the first black woman to be a foreign bureau chief at The Post; and Michelle Singletary, the most successful nationally-syndicated black woman columnist in Post history.

In their youth, Lester and his brothers saved the world. In their youth, Marcia and her sisters began to triumph in newsrooms. They both bands won hard-fought grueling wars.