Becomes Nashville's First African American Journalist

In 1950, Churchwell received a telephone call from Coyness Ennix, an African American attorney and president of the Solid Block Organization, a civic group organized to get African Americans to the voting booth. Considered by many as one of the most influential political leaders in Nashville’s African American community, Ennix received a call from officials of the Nashville Banner , the city’s daily evening newspaper, seeking a reporter. The paper’s publisher, James Geddes Stahlman, an avowed segregationist, wanted to hire a black reporter to cover black news because the paper suffered decreased circulation and was all but nonexistent in the African American community. Newspaper executives thought they could boost revenue if they attracted African American readers, especially if they and their community were covered in the Nashville Banner , Nashville’s oldest and most conservative paper that sanctioned segregationist ideals of the Old South. Concern about the paper’s profit line brought Stahlman to the decision to hire an African American reporter full-time. The task of implementing the publisher’s mandate was given to Charles Moss, the paper’s executive editor.

Moss turned to Ennix, explaining that the Nashville Banner wanted to report progressive news in the African American community. Attorney Ennix approved of the paper’s so-called policy shift and agreed to search for a person to fill the position. Later, Ennix called Churchwell. Churchwell disapproved of the publisher’s position on race matters. Stahlman’s hegemonic attitude permeated the paper but was especially explicit in his own column, “From the Shoulder,” which criticized public officials, politicians, and organizations among others, who objected to the separate-but-equal edict, especially in the South. The paper gave top priority to stories that maligned blacks as second-class citizens. Stahlman’s views, which the Banner mirrored, were antithetical to Churchwell’s viewpoint and values.

Although he had almost decided against accepting the Banner offer, Churchwell agreed to meet with Ennix and L. J. Gunn. Because he was unemployed and insolvent, Churchwell, without a topcoat, walked to Ennix’s downtown office. The men argued for awhile, then Ennix and Gunn convinced Churchwell to agree. Approximately three days after the meeting with Ennix and Gunn, Moss offered Robert Churchwell the position as a staff reporter for the Nashville Banner , at $35 per week, which he accepted, thus breaking the South’s journalism color line.

Hired to write on how African Americans were doing in their own community, Churchwell did not even own a typewriter or, for that matter, know how to type. He borrowed a typewriter from a former high school teacher, and after he printed the stories out for her, his sister typed them. Although an employee of the Banner , during Churchwell’s first five years of employment, Moss never assigned him a desk in the newsroom. Churchwell covered activity in the African American community: the boy and girl Scouts, the YMCA and the YWCA, the city’s four African American institutions of higher education (American Baptist Theological Seminary, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, and Tennessee A & I State College), businesses, the Masonic and Elk Lodges, and the churches. To make his 8:00 a.m. copy deadline, Churchwell’s day began at 3:00 a.m. The newly assigned reporter walked from his home in southeast Nashville to the Banner office on Broadway, to give his copy to Moss rather than the city editor.

In June 1951, Churchwell married Mary Elizabeth Buckingham of Bell Buckle, Tennessee. They became the parents of Robert Jr., Andre, twins Kevin and Keith, and Marisa.

In 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Banner gave Churchwell the assignment of covering education throughout the city, including the Nashville Board of Education and white institutions of higher education. While still covering the African American community, Churchwell also covered the Parent Teachers Association and the Tennessee Education Association. A year later, Churchwell was given a desk in the paper’s newsroom. Despite the era’s social code, from the beginning a few reporters on the Banner staff went out of their way to be nice to Churchwell. As far as Churchwell was concerned, however, the Banner city room remained filled with those who shared the publisher’s sentiment. Although he desegregated the paper’s newsroom, including the men’s room and the water fountain, Churchwell in the early days never felt a part of those who worked for the paper. There were no friendly lunches with co-workers and he and his wife were never invited to the annual Christmas party, which was held at a local segregated private club. Churchwell received a check to cover the cost of dinner somewhere else until the early 1970s, when staffers agreed that the custom was no longer acceptable.

Perhaps one of the biggest stories to emerge during Churchwell’s early tenure at the Nashville Banner was the protest against segregated lunch counters launched by student activists. Because such demonstrations challenged the Banner ‘s mission, its reporters were prohibited from covering the students’ protest. However, as a part of his ongoing coverage of the African American community, Churchwell attended mass meetings held throughout the community almost every night. Although he covered the Nashville sit-in movement and wrote stories on it, they never appeared in print. The paper refused to carry any news of a major struggle for African American civil rights.

By the 1970s, almost two decades after Churchwell joined the Banner staff, white colleagues began to respect his reporting acumen, especially as an education reporter. In 1972, the Gannett Corporation purchased the Banner , and many felt that the acquisition signaled its transition to a more racially tolerant position. However, as the veteran reporter continued his work with the paper, Churchwell did not witness any change connected to him personally. Even with the change in the paper’s ownership, Churchwell, unlike the younger reporters, did not advance. According to A. Tacuma Roeback of the Tennessean , during his final two years at the Banner , Churchwell said “he went from educational reporter to writing obituaries and compiling the stock market report.”