[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 3]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 3124-3125]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO WILBERT TATUM AND THE AMSTERDAM NEWS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 4, 2008

  Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I rise today to celebrate two birthdays.
  Wilbert ``Bill'' Tatum never shies away from a good fight. The 
publisher emeritus of Amsterdam News, starting in 1978, ran editorials 
excoriating then-Mayor of New York, Democrat Ed Koch, once a week--
every week--on the paper's front page. The recurring, and unrelenting, 
box read: ``Why Koch Should Resign.'' By the time Koch left office a 
decade later, Tatum had turned his attention to another New York mayor, 
this time Republican Rudolph Giuliani. He demanded his resignation, 
too.
  Throughout his life, which this year eclipses the 75-year mark, Tatum 
has been unafraid to show his mettle. He has railed against one-time 
popular policies--the invasion of Iraq and racial profiling--and 
defended unpopular, often controversial figures. The man who forged a 
niche for himself in black journalism, and broadened the field with his 
editorial perspective, is all about developing big ideas--and sticking 
to them. ``Don't worry about your beliefs if they are yours,'' Tatum 
writes in a recent column. ``If you have to depend upon somebody else's 
beliefs, then you have no beliefs at all.'' On the anniversary of his 
birth, it is that unflappable spirit we celebrate, honor, and uplift.
  He's a self-billed ``pragmatic idealist.'' As the director of 
community relations for the city's building department, he fervidly 
sought to develop new housing in poor neighborhoods. He spent a 
winter's night in 1967, huddled in an evacuated and unheated Queens 
housing development, just to highlight the plight of tenants. He, years 
later, lobbied then-Governor Mario Cuomo to establish a toll-free 
telephone line that gave residents tips, and accepted their complaints, 
about drug trafficking. But over the past quarter century, he's made 
his mark in the media.
  He owned financial interests in Inner City Broadcasting Corp, Apollo 
Theatre, and two radio stations, WLIB and WBLS. He served a brief stint 
as co-publisher of the New York Post in 1993, alongside real estate 
developer Abe Hirschfeld. And through the pages of the Amsterdam News, 
the Harlem-based Black weekly that came under his direction in 1982, 
Tatum developed his own voice.
  That paper projected a critical and focused voice of its own, 
particularly at a time when issues of concern to African Americans were 
largely ignored by the mainstream media. It all began nearly 100 years 
ago--with nothing but $10, six sheets of paper, a lead pencil, and a 
table as its initial capital--and, in short order, it became New York's 
largest and most influential Black-owned, Black-operated business. At 
its zenith, its circulation peaked 100,000 and by the 1940s, it had 
become a leading black paper along with the storied Pittsburgh Courier, 
the Afro-American, and the Chicago Defender. Greats like W.E.B. DuBois, 
Roy Wilkins, and Adam Clayton Powell contributed to its pages. As one 
of the most frequently quoted black weeklies in the world, it says its 
strength lies in its ``shaping the advancement and realization of Black 
aspirations.''
  It now commands an irrefutable spot on the mantel of American Black 
history. It made visible the invisible; gave speech to the voiceless. 
It championed the causes of civil rights, amplifying the too-often 
muffled calls from the community. It fought for integration in the 
Armed Forces during World War II and was at the forefront in covering 
events such as the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama. Tatum, himself, 
has been lauded for taking the paper in a new, fresh direction--
harkening back to its history while remaining modern and relevant. He's 
expanded its coverage of international affairs, attracting a wide 
variety of new readership from all corners of the local, national, and 
even international market.
  Tatum was born in January 23, 1933, in a three-room shack in Durham, 
North Carolina, 10th out of 13 siblings, against the backdrop of 
segregation and summers of tobacco-field toil. He today boasts a degree 
from Pennsylvania's Lincoln University, the oldest Black university in 
the U.S., a master's in urban studies from Occidental College in L.A, 
and a National Urban fellowship at Yale. Out of work in segregationist 
America, ``too well-educated'' to land a post as a janitor at any of 
the New York newspapers, and instead, tried his luck as a reporter and 
columnist in Europe.
  But he has since carved out a safe space of his own, assuming the 
leadership of a historic paper and injecting his powerful voice into 
the dialog. He has all our best wishes on his birthday and in this 
year, as his paper celebrates a milestone--a century's worth of scoops, 
awards, exclusives, and history-making. We are all the better for it.

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