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THE WEEKLY POST • Thursday, December 8, 2016
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AUTHOR: ‘Lingering distrust of the media’ Continued from Page 1
one of his earliest career aspirations. “My initial plans were to teach high school history. But by the time I was wrapping up college (at Northern Illinois University with a bachelor’s in history in 1993), the idea of staying in school didn’t appeal to me. “So then I bounced around a bit,” he says, recalling even trying a stint with a uniform delivery company. “I realized that wasn’t for me and that’s when I decided I wanted to go back and take some journalism classes.” That led to a newspaper career in suburban Chicago, Gastonia, N.C., and Newport News, Va. While he was happy with the newspaper business, he also wanted deeper understanding of the context of events. That led to completing a master’s degree in American Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2004 while still working at the Daily Press in Newport News. “I did it largely because I thought it would assist me in my newspaper work,” he says. His interest was fully understanding why some sources – particularly if they were African American – seemed to hold the press at a distance. “Both of my last two newspaper jobs were in cities (Gastonia and Newport News) that were part of the Confederacy,” he says. “What I realized after a while was there was a lingering distrust of the media because of the stance they had taken
against ending segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. I thought, we had already gone through the civil rights and voting rights movements – that they were things of the past from 50 years ago. I realized I didn’t know as much about race as I thought or as much as I wanted to know.” Even though he’d embarked on the advanced degree to enhance his skills as a journalist, Carroll also soon realized a couple of things: First, “newspapers were changing, and not all for the better,” he says, noting layoffs were becoming more common at papers – including two rounds that already had hit his paper by 2006. Carroll’s second realization was that he liked researching, discussing and writing about the past, perhaps even more than working with the present. His epiphany was the greater satisfaction in sharing the “complete” perspective of historical vs. current events. It also doesn’t hurt, he adds, laughing, that as opposed to his newspaper days, his subjects – such as lawyers and politicians – are most often “dead as opposed to alive.” But his journalism background had kindled his interest in ongoing research focusing on African Americans’ fight for racial justice. He earned his doctorate in history from the College of William and Mary in 2012, again focusing on race for his research and thesis. “Once you get into it, as a historian, I tell people that the issue of
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race to America is so central, you can’t ignore it ... It shows America at its worst, but it also shows America at its most hopeful.” Prior to his current position at Duquesne, Carroll also has been a lecturer at Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Va., and a visiting professor at Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, NC. As for his new status as a soon-tobe published author and recent subject of a C-SPAN program, Carroll says not much has changed. After watching the C-SPAN program with his family, “My youngest daughter, Melissa – she’s 9 – said, ‘Well, Dad, you’re famous now’, ” he says, laughing. “And I guess I’ve had a couple of people want to follow me on Twitter and Linked-In. Also, my siblings were nice to recognize it on Facebook. But there hasn’t been too much more than that. It was CSPAN II, after all.” Even so, the book has been a long labor of love, with the research and numerous conference presentations over eight years leading to attaining a publisher, says Carroll, who lives with wife Lisa and daughters Emma, 14, and Melissa in Newport News. University classrooms and libraries are a primary target market, but the book also will be available on Amazon in fall of 2017. Carroll’s appearance on the CSPAN program can be viewed at: www.c-span.org/video/?4187711.