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Beware of Limbo Dancers: A Correspondent's Adventures with the New York Times. By Roy Reed. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2012. Pp. xv, 261. Acknowledgments, illustrations, index. $34.95.)
On June 6, 1966, James Meredith was trying to make history-again. The man who had integrated the University of Mississippi in 1962 had announced he would walk from Memphis into his home state, perhaps as far as Jackson. This bold gesture was met with a shotgun blast in the back from a white man who didn't think the walk was a good idea.
As the shot was fired, Roy Reed of the New York Times was just a few hundred yards down the road. He was there to cover Mr. Meredith's jour- ney, but nothing much had seemed to be going on during that scorching day, so he and some other reporters were having a soda water at a country store. They heard about the shooting when they saw people running back from the scene. Meanwhile, 1100 miles away in New York City, Reed's editor, Claude Sitton, was scanning the photos being transmitted over the wire, looking for his reporter.
"Where's Roy Reed?" he asked (p. 150).
It's a funny story, unless you've ever been a reporter-especially one who has ever barely missed being at the right place at the right time. Frankly, it gave me the willies. Reed redeemed himself by getting the first interview with Meredith in the hospital, where he was recovering from injuries that turned out to be minor. But the memory of the miss...