By: Randall Williams, Former Editor 1972-1973
Censorship of “The Samford Crimson” wasn’t a new issue when I became editor in the fall of 1972. Two of the three editors immediately before me had faced the problem. But matters came to a head after President Leslie Wright ordered journalism department chairman Richmond Brown—”the Crimson’s” faculty sponsor—to suppress associate editor Bill Steverson’s reporting on the development of the old lakebed property across Lakeshore Drive south of the campus.
The university had been gifted that lakebed with a deed covenant barring its development, and the people in Homewood liked it that way.
Samford fought a legal battle all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court to break the deed covenant, and the result would be Brookwood Mall, Homewood High School and other construction.
Meanwhile, environmentalists and Homewood citizens were harshly critical of Samford’s plans. The controversy was loud and significant and was all over the Birmingham media, both print and broadcast.
It was news, and Steverson and I and other “Crimson” staffers felt that reporting news about the university to our fellow students—our readers—was our job as student journalists on the student newspaper.
President Wright had other concerns. He ordered Brown to tell us that the only thing we could print about the issue was a press release that university officials would give us.
He subsequently declared that “The Samford Crimson” was not actually a student newspaper, but instead was a “house organ” of its parent institution.
The fact that student activity fees supported the student newspaper did not alter his view, because those funds were administered by the university.
The lines were sharply drawn. And the “Crimson” staff resigned in protest.
We then implemented what we thought would solve the student journalists’ problem and President Wright’s. We would create an independent student newspaper, not beholden to the university nor controlled by it, but financed by ad sales, subscriptions and donations.
Thus “Another Voice” was born, and the first issue carried Steverson’s lakebed reporting as the front-page story.
The university promptly confiscated the copies we put out on the campus. And Steverson, I, and a few other, “Another Voice” staffers were threatened with expulsion.
The university backed down on expelling us after we got legal representation from two young ACLU attorneys, Bill Dawson and Bill Pugh.
The SGA, WVSU, the Cumberland Student Bar Association, the “Alabama Baptist” and local and national newspapers and journalism schools supported us.
The university appointed another student as editor of the “Crimson,” which resumed publication. “Another Voice” published through the spring and managed one issue in the fall of 1973.
By that time Steverson was working part-time as a reporter for the “Birmingham Post-Herald” and I was doing the same for the “Birmingham News.”
Richmond Brown was fired, the journalism department was dismantled and folded into the English department, and I lost my scholarship, effectively booting me out of school. Brown joined the faculty at UAB, I went to work full-time, and the Crimson returned to its new normal.
Leslie Wright also served some years on the Alabama Ethics Commission, a state agency. By then I was living and working in Montgomery, and I covered a meeting of the commission.
During a break in the proceedings, I went up to him and thanked him for giving me the best journalism education anyone had ever gotten at Samford University. He wasn’t sure how to take that, but I meant it.
I had learned a lot in a few short months about institutional power, law and land development, the presence of character in some (looking at you, Richmond Brown) and its lack in others, and the principled practice of journalism “without fear or favor.”
In 1983, Wright was succeeded as president by Thomas Corts, who would give his blessing to the reopening of Samford’s journalism program.
Twenty-five years later I was invited to speak to a journalism class about the 1972 “Crimson” events and in 2010 I was offered my scholarship back by President Andrew Westmoreland and I returned to class two days a week for two semesters and graduated from Samford in 2011.
Yes, I walked in the processional.
I remain fond of the “Crimson,” and fifty years later I still believe fiercely in newspapers and newspaper journalism.
Community newspapers are a special interest of mine, and the “Crimson” was and is a publication for its Samford community. Its student journalists and editors deserve support and appreciation. They have mine.
