Studs Terkel Of course, you have a number of points you raise even now that are overwhelming. And the second point that the American people don't know, is that three years ago Dean Rusk signed a secret document with the prime minister of Thailand which commits us to defend the current government in Thailand, regardless of the issues involved. They are Thais who are disgusted with their government, for reasons we will discuss a little bit later, and they have taken to the hills and they are carrying out a revolution against their government. The first is that the communist insurgents - and they are not outside invaders - let's clear the air. There are a couple of facts the American people yet don't know. It is not a Vietnam that's going to be it is Vietnam that is already in existence. And I was shocked when I got into Thailand and found out that, indeed, this country has already been committed to another Vietnam. First of all, I happen to have grave reservations about our involvement in Southeast Asia, on the whole and Vietnam in particular. Louis Lomax Well, thank you very much for the compliment. And indeed this book, Louis, is is one of, a bill of particulars, if ever there was one.
#LOUIS LOMAX TV#
Louis Lomax, who is a very perceptive American newspaper man, conducts his own TV program on the coast, and was a Chicago newspaper man for many years - written some very excellent provocative books - recently visited one of our allies, Thailand, and there have been rumors - and the book, by the way, is called "Thailand," subtitle is, "The War That Is, The War That Will Be" and the sub-subtitle, "A Firsthand Account of Another Vietnam in the Making". Lomax may have helped a white journalist condemn the NOI on national television, but the documentary’s positive impact on the group’s membership rolls kept him in the good graces of both Muhammad and Malcolm X.Studs Terkel America, in its most incredible adventure in Vietnam, considers certain allies, as Thailand, Laos, South Korea, Australia. Yet even as it smeared the NOI as something akin to a Black supremacist terrorist organization, it also gained it thousands of new recruits. Nothing less than a hatchet job, the breathless exposé made Lomax a known name to journalists across the country. Lomax’s work with Mike Wallace on The Hate That Hate Produced, a CBS television documentary on the NOI, catapulted him to national prominence in 1959. Nowhere were Lomax’s ideological contradictions more evident than in his relationship with the Nation of Islam. If anything, Lomax made a name for himself as a contrarian, someone who chastised nationally prominent civil rights organizations for being too cautious while criticizing more radical Black groups for being reckless.
Indeed, Aiello’s subtitle, The Art of Deliberate Disunity, refers to an August 1963 speech from Lomax days before the March on Washington where he lambasted “Negro euphoria, that seizure of silly happiness and emotional release that comes in the wake of a partial civil rights victory” (1). His stances on politics depended more on who he was in the room with-and who he might immediately disagree with. It would be an understatement to describe Lomax’s views as flexible.
The pursuit of career accomplishments, more than any particular ideology, seems to have grounded Lomax’s life. Proximity to fame and the pursuit of the next advance were constant motivators, especially when he faced money issues. Presidential candidates called on him for endorsements and universities hired him to teach.Īt times, Lomax’s work was marked more by provocation than principle, more by sensationalism than substance.
By the time he died in 1970, Lomax was a nationally recognized expert on Black politics. In the decades following World War II, Louis Lomax was one of the leading commentators on Black life in the United States, the author of five books and countless stories, and the host of his own syndicated television talk show. This is his second work on Black journalists, his first being a history of the Atlanta World network. A historian at Valdosta State University, Aiello is an impressively productive writer, the author of no fewer than twelve books in the last thirteen years. Thomas Aiello’s new work, The Life & Times of Louis Lomax: the Art of Deliberate Disunity, is the newest addition to this literature. Jackson, and Lerone Bennett in the last decade, many other Black reporters and editors still deserve their own studies. Even as biographers have written on Alex Haley, Ethel Payne, Louis Austin, Emory O. We still have far too few histories of Black journalists.