Goode, Mal(vin) Russell

(b. 13 February 1908 in White Plains, Virginia; d. 12 September 1995 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), newspaper and radio reporter and commentator who became the first black correspondent hired by a major American television network, known as the “dean of black journalism.”

The grandson of slaves, Goode grew up in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a steel mill town near Pittsburgh. His father, William Goode, left White Plains, Virginia—and the land his family was given at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation—as a teenager to work in the Pittsburgh steel mills for $1.25 per day. He sent money home but stayed in Homestead and raised his family with his wife, Mary Ellen Hunter, who was a schoolteacher. They had six children.

Even though Homestead had a sizable black population, all of Goode’s schoolteachers were white and they often made him sit in the back of the class. After graduating from high school in 1927, Goode went to work at U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works to pay his way through the prelaw program at the University of Pittsburgh. He worked the night shift while attending classes during the day. In his sophomore year he received a grade of C in a course in which he had earned no lower than on any of the assigned work or quizzes. Goode visited the professor to ask about the grade. He recalled the professor saying, “Mr. Goode, you don’t expect to get what a white student gets, do you?”

In 1931 he received his bachelor’s degree and took the only employment he could find—as a janitor in a clothing store. Subsequent jobs included a position as a counselor at a Pittsburgh YMCA, a probation officer, and a manager for the Pittsburgh Housing Authority.

Goode married Mary Louise Lavelle in 1936. The couple had six children. In 1948 Mary’s brother was the top ad salesman at the Pittsburgh Courier, the country’s largest newspaper serving the black community. Goode was hired by the Courier that same year as an assistant to the circulation manager. He also worked in public relations for the paper.

The following year KQV radio offered the Pittsburgh Courier a fifteen-minute time slot for two days each week. Goode became the host of “The Courier Speaks,” a program on which he discussed issues relevant to the black community. In 1950 the program moved to WHOD, a radio station where Goode’s sister Mary Dee was a staff member. The siblings cohosted the show for six years. Goode was news director of WHOD and became the first African American to hold membership in the National Association of Radio and TV News Directors.

It was Goode’s friendship with the baseball great Jackie Robinson that led to Goode being hired by ABC’s television news division in 1962. Robinson had been critical of the network for not hiring any black reporters. The vice president of ABC News, Jim Hagerty, asked Robinson to recommend a suitable candidate for an on-air position. His suggestion was Goode. The fifty-four-year-old reporter auditioned for fourteen ABC executives and signed a contract on 10 September 1962.

Goode, who made his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, was sent to the United Nations, usually a fairly slow beat, to get acquainted with the new medium. His on-the-job training accelerated when the Cuban missile crisis broke in October 1962. On the first day, he did seven special bulletins on network television and nine on network radio, all without the assistance of a producer. His fair complexion and wavy hair caused some uncertainty among viewers about Goode’s race. A woman in the television audience from South Carolina wrote to the network: “I think that was a colored man I saw reporting all day long on the Cuban missile crisis. And although I am white, and although he is a colored man, I want to thank him and I want to thank ABC because this is America, and that’s the way it ought to be.”

But Goode endured racism on the job. Occasionally, a white cameraman assigned to record Goode’s stories would twist the film in the camera to sabotage the endeavor. Goode persevered, however, and went on to cover many of the critical stories of the 1960s, including the Democratic and Republican conventions of 1964 and 1968. He interviewed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., and was the sole African American network correspondent assigned to cover King’s funeral in April 1968. Goode covered the 1968 funeral of Robert Kennedy and the Poor People’s March on Washington, D.C., that same year. He also reported the ABC documentary It Can Be Done (1969), which chronicled the resignation of a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon in Atlanta, Georgia, and his eventual support of black voter registration and increased minority employment.

Goode retired from ABC News in 1973, but remained a consultant to the network for fifteen years. As former president of the United Nations Correspondents Association, he maintained an office at the UN building until he was nearly eighty. In his retirement Goode was also active on the lecture circuit. A favorite theme of his talks, particularly to young black audiences, was “I did it. You can do it, too.” The Minorities in Broadcast Training Program—a nonprofit organization that selects, trains, and places minority college graduates in news reporting and management jobs—presents an annual Mal Goode Lifetime Achievement Award.

Goode played dual roles in his professional life. He was a reporter and an advocate for civil rights. When he wore his reporter’s cap, he was an impartial observer of events. But when he fought for the cause of his people, he was single-minded. Goode died from the complications of a stroke on 12 September 1995, by which time he had witnessed dramatic progress for black reporters in American broadcasting. Prominent African Americans in television news such as the Cable News Network (CNN) anchor Bernard Shaw and the Emmy Award—winning senior correspondent for ABC News, Carole Simpson, have acknowledged the pioneering role of Goode as an inspiration for their own success. He is buried at Saint Peter’s Cemetery in East Liberty, Pennsylvania.

Goode is included among the subjects in African Americans Who Were First, by Joan Potter and Constance Claytor (1997). When Goode was honored with a Racial Justice Award from the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh, the New Pittsburgh Courier carried a synopsis of his accomplishments in an article by Sandy Hamm, “Former Courier Editor Mal Goode Set for Honors” (9 Nov. 1994). Several obituaries profiled the significance of Goode in the history of American journalism, including the New York Times (15 Sept. 1995), the National Association of Black Journalists Journal (30 Sept. 1995), and the New York Amsterdam News (23 Sept. 1995). The most complete story of Mal Goode’s life and career is found in the documentary Pioneer of Color: A Conversation with Mal Goode, PBS Video (1991).

Mary Ann Watson