GOODE, Malvin Russell ("Mal")

(b. 13 February 1908 in White Plains, Virginia; d. 12 September 1995 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), newspaper reporter and radio commentator who became the first black correspondent hired by an American television network during the rise of the civil rights movement, and who was known as the "Dean of Black Journalism."

Goode was raised in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a steel mill town near Pittsburgh. His father, William Goode, the son of slaves, married a schoolteacher, Mary Ellen Hunter. They had six children. Although Homestead had a sizable black population, all of Goode's schoolteachers were white and often made him sit in the back of the classroom. After graduating in 1927 from high school, Goode went to work at U.S. Steel's Homestead Works to support himself while enrolled in the pre-law program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Goode earned his bachelor's degree in 1931, but the only job he could find was as a clothing store janitor. Later jobs included working as a counselor at a Pittsburgh YMCA, a probation officer, and a manager for the Pittsburgh Housing Authority. Goode and Mary Louise Lavelle were married in 1936. They raised six children.

In 1948 Goode began his career in journalism as an assistant to the circulation manager of the Pittsburgh Courier, the nation's largest newspaper serving the black community. Goode also worked in public relations for the Courier. The next year Pittsburgh's KQV radio offered the newspaper fifteen minutes of airtime two days each week. Goode was selected as the host of "The Courier Speaks," a program dealing with issues affecting the black community. In 1950 the program moved to radio station WHOD. Goode eventually became the news director of WHOD and also the first African-American member of the National Association of Radio and TV News Directors.

Goode's friendship with the baseball great Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, led to Goode being hired by the ABC television news division in 1962. Robinson was critical of network television's lack of black reporters. Jim Hagerty, vice president of ABC News, asked the well-known athlete to recommend suitable candidates for an on-air position. Among those Robinson suggested was Goode. The fifty-four-year-old reporter auditioned for fourteen ABC executives and signed a contract on 10 September that year.

The novice television reporter, who now made his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, was assigned to the usually slow United Nations beat to get acquainted with the new medium. He was thrust into the vortex of international events, though, with the outbreak in October 1962 of the Cuban Missile Crisis. On the first day, Goode delivered seven special bulletins on network television and nine on network radio, all without the assistance of a producer. His light-colored skin and wavy hair confused some viewers regarding Goode's race. A South Carolina woman 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."

One of the assets Goode brought to his United Nations beat was his familiarity with African diplomats, who were routinely ignored by white reporters. Goode's insight was critical during the 1960s, when African nations were declaring their independence from European powers. In 1963, through the auspices of the State Department and the African American Institute, Goode taught advanced journalism courses in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

In America, however, Goode often endured racism on the job. Occasionally, a white cameraman assigned to Goode's stories would twist the film in the camera to sabotage the report. But Goode persevered. Throughout the 1960s he covered many of the decade's critical stories, including the Democratic and Republican National 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 also covered the 1968 funeral of Robert Kennedy. His reports from the Poor People's March on Washington, D.C., that same year were passionate in calling attention to the hunger and poverty in black America. Goode also narrated the ABC documentary It Can Be Done (1969), which chronicled the resignation of a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon in Atlanta and his eventual support of black voter registration and increased minority employment.

By 1968, when the famous Kerner Commission report called for white media organizations to hire more black reporters, Goode had already been mentoring young black journalists for several years. Throughout his tenure at ABC News, Goode prodded network executives to reverse their discriminatory hiring practices.

Goode retired in 1973 but remained a consultant to ABC News 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. Goode was also active on the lecture circuit. One of his favorite themes, particularly for 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 was both a reporter and an advocate for civil rights throughout his professional life. As a reporter, he was an impartial observer of events. But when fighting for the cause of African Americans, he was single-minded. Goode died from the complications of a stroke. In a little over three decades he had witnessed dramatic progress in American broadcasting. Prominent African Americans in television news, such as Carole Simpson, the Emmy Award-winning senior correspondent for ABC News, and the Cable News Network anchor Bernard Shaw, have acknowledged the pioneering role of Goode in the 1960s as an inspiration for their own success. He is buried in East Liberty, Pennsylvania, in Saint Peter's Cemetery.

Goode is included among the subjects in Joan Potter and Constance Claytor, African Americans Who Were First (1997). When Goode was honored with the 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), New York Amsterdam News (23 Sept. 1995), and National Association of Black Journalists Journal (30 Sept. 1995). The most complete story of Mal Goode's life and career is found in the PBS documentary Pioneer of Color: A Conversation with Mal Goode (1991).

Mary Ann Watson