Word: couriers
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MOST OF the Courier's readers are rural Negroes in the Black Belt of Alabama and Mississippi (during the Meredith March from Memphis to Jackson last summer, the Courier distributed free copies along the route, received letters asking for reporters and subscriptions, and happily supplied both). Few people want their copies mailed; they prefer to pay a dime each time the six-page full-sized paper is delivered to their doorstep. The Courier buses papers out to dozens of local distributors--housewives, civil rights leaders, retired steelworkers--who mail back the paper's share of the money collected, as well...
...intensely loyal readers, many of whom are all but illiterate and most of whom read nothing else, the Courier has developed a peculiar journalese that wavers between first-grade primer and Time magazine style. Efforts to render complex political shenanigans comprehensible lead to headlines like "Who's Doing What to Whom in Phenix City?" An interview with a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor last year contained this passage: "He sprinkled the crackers into his soup. Not too many crackers, and not too few. It was a middle-of-the-road sort of sprinkle...
People unaccustomed to writing have taken pencil in hand to carve smudgy letters of praise to the Courier. The comments echo those of a graying man sitting on a barrel at a gas station in Bessemer one summer afternoon: "That's a good paper. It's easy to read...
...Courier reporters come to occupy unique positions in the communities in which they live (there are bureaus in a half dozen Alabama cities, two in Mississippi). They keep in touch with Negro political groups--which may not be on speaking terms with each other--and talk frequently with white officials downtown...
School officials in Lowndes Co., despairing over rumors that Negroes planned demonstrations for the first day of school integration, checked with the local Courier reporter, who assured them the rumors were false; integration went ahead as planned...