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Home/ stevenwarran's Library/ Notes/ February 25, 1997, San Francisco Chronicle, Letters to the Editor; Renaming Millard Fillmore's S.F. street for Carlton Goodlett,

February 25, 1997, San Francisco Chronicle, Letters to the Editor; Renaming Millard Fillmore's S.F. street for Carlton Goodlett,

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Renaming Millard Fillmore's S.F. street for Carlton Goodlett

 

I differ vehemently with columnist Scott Winokur when he lightly dismisses Dr. Carlton Goodlett as "not a great journalist," equating him with Millard Fillmore, who was not a great president ( "Millard Fillmore, defender of slavery," Opinion Page, Feb. 18).

 

Winokur should read some of the fiery editorial written by Goodlett in The Sun-Reporter during the '50s, '60s and '70s. They were widely read by all - black and white - who hungered for an alternative point of view during the McCarthy era, the civil rights struggle and the war in Vietnam. He was an eloquent advocate of the people, and published his newspaper as a fearless voice for reason and humanity. Eleanor Ohman San Francisco

 

Scott Winokur gets one thing right about Millard Fillmore when he says the 13th president was a mediocrity who doesn't deserve a street. According to the World Book encyclopedia, when Oxford University wanted to give Fillmore an honorary degree he declined, saying he had done nothing to deserve such an honor.

 

But Winokur's comments about Dr. Carlton Goodlett are ignorant, inaccurate and mean-spirited. He claims Goodlett was not a great journalist. Yet Goodlett took a small, struggling local black paper, The Sun-Reporter, and turned it into a political powerhouse. Mayor Brown, Rep. Ron Dellums and state Sen. John Burton all credit Goodlett and his newspaper as being crucial to their careers.

 

Goodlett expanded his one paper into a publishing company of nine black weeklies throughout Northern California. He was elected three times as president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which comprises over 200 black papers throughout the country. Not bad for a man who was also a full-time physician.

 

Winokur hits below the belt when he accuses Goodlett, a highly successful businessman, of having "strong ties to Communist groups." Perhaps Winokur is unaware that when The Sun-Reporter began in the late 1940s, none of the mainstream daily newspapers in the Bay Area hired any black reporters. However, the nation's Communist-oriented dailies, including one in San Francisco at the time, had racially mixed staffs.

 

Should Goodlett be blamed for befriending such Communist sympathizers as W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, who were blacklisted, shunned and deprived of their passports by the U.S. government?

 

Winokur's final slam against Goodlett, for being the physician of Jim Jones and giving him an award six years before Jonestown, is the cruelest cut of all. Jones fooled literally thousands of people, from the top of the political heap to the homeless. It's about time to stop blaming others for the sins of this madman. Max Millard San Francisco

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stevenwarran

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on Jul 17, 13