LEON DASH’S CONTRIBUTION TO JOURNALISM IN THE BAHAMAS WAS CONSISTENT WITH HIS HISTORIC COMMITMENT AS A MEMBER OF THE METRO SEVEN

Fifty years ago, the Metro Seven and their lawyer, Clifford Alexander, held a press conference to announce that they had filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against The Washington Post. From left, Michael Hodge, Ivan C Brandon, Bobbi Bowman, Leon Dash, Penny Mickelbury, Ron Taylor, Richard Prince & Clifford Alexander.”

By OSWALD T. BROWN

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 5, 2022 — My very good friend Professor Leon Dash, a former award-winning reporter at the Washington Post, has changed his Facebook profile photo with an historic photo of the METRO SEVEN, taken 50 years ago, that brought back some treasured memories of his tenure as a consultant with The Nassau Guardian.

Professor Dash was one seven black reporters from The Washington Post metropolitan desk who in 1972 took a stand for equality in the newsroom—becoming the first to challenge a major U.S. newspaper on its hiring practices—when they filed a formal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Known as The Metro Seven, they were represented by renowned Washington, D.C., lawyer Clifford Alexander.

Members of the Washington Post Metro Seven reunite at the New York home of Clifford and Adele Alexander on Sept. 29, 2018. The Metro Seven were black Washington Post reporters who filed an EEOC complaint against the newspaper with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1972. Cliff Alexander was the group’s lawyer. Penny Mickelbury was unable to be present; Michael B. Hodge died in 2017. (Credit: Adele Alexander)

I first met Professor Dash in 2006 during one of his periodic visits to Nassau as a consultant with the Nassau Guardian when I attended a board meeting as Editor of the Freeport News, which was owned by The Guardian.

Shortly after the late Sir Charles Carter became Publisher of the Nassau Guardian in 2006, he contacted his old-time friend he had attended high school with in New York who had established a very successful career as a journalist in the United States.

Sir Charles had also become a renowned journalist, but radio and television were the foundation for his journalistic accomplishments, and he realized that the challenges that lie ahead as publisher of one of The Bahamas’ leading daily newspapers required the advice and support of someone who had experience in the print aspect of the Fourth Estate. Therefore, he placed a phone call to his old high school buddy, Leon Dash, and convinced the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who had become a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to visit Nassau to discuss the possibility of becoming an editorial consultant for The Guardian.

Given his pioneering background in helping to “tear down” racial barriers in journalism at the Washington Post, Dash immediately devised and established a journalistic training program at The Guardian after he became a consultant. He took his training program one step further by arranging for several young reporters at The Guardian, who had undergraduate degrees in journalism, to obtain scholarships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study for their Master’s Degree in journalism.

The first young journalist to benefit from his scholarship program was Thea Rutherford, who had been a reporter at The Freeport News when I was editor of that Grand Bahama-based daily newspaper from 2003 -2009 before she joined the staff of The Guardian. Actually, because both The Guardian and The Freeport News were owned by the same company, Thea’s “transfer” came after she decided to relocate to Nassau from Freeport.

Professor Leon Dash was a consultant with The Nassau Guardian for two years from 2006 to 2008.

Thea was an ideal first choice by Dash for advanced training in journalism. She had obtained a Bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science from Canada’s McGill University in 2004. She joined the staff of The Freeport News shortly after she graduated from McGill and was an exceptionally good reporter.

Because I previously lived in Washington, D.C., for 21 years before returning to The Bahamas permanently in 1996, I knew Dash was an award-winning journalist at the Washington Post when I met him at the first board meeting I attended at The Guardian.

His contributions to those meetings impressed me tremendously and there was no question in my mind that Sir Charles, with whom I have shared a close friendship from boyhood days, had made an excellent choice in “contracting” the services of his boyhood friend as a consultant.

I still do not know the full story as to why the contractual arrangement between Professor Dash and The Guardian ended, but published reports at the time indicated that he tendered his resignation as a member of The Nassau Guardian Board of Directors in December of 2008 in the aftermath of Sir Charles resigning as publisher. There is no question, however, that Professor Dash’s two-year stint as a consultant at The Guardian by any yardstick noticeably enhanced the quality of journalism at that daily newspaper tremendously.

Incidentally, Professor Dash recently celebrated his 78^th birthday on March 16, and I would once again – as I did back then – wish my good friend happy birthday and hope that the Good Lord blesses him with many, many more happy birthday anniversaries.