Thomas C. Fleming

Thomas Courtney Fleming (November 29, 1907 – November 21, 2006), was one of the most influential African American journalists on the West Coast in the 20th century. Starting in 1944, he spent 61 years as an editor, reporter and columnist for the black press in San Francisco. He began his career that year as founding editor of the Reporter – then the city's only black newspaper. In 1948 it merged with the rival Sun to become the Sun-Reporter. Published by Fleming's best friend, civil rights activist and physician Dr. Carlton Goodlett,

Fleming retired as executive editor of the Sun-Reporter in 1997, At the age of 90 he gained a national reputation when his 86-part series, "Reflections on Black History," was syndicated to more than 200 black newspapers through the National Newspaper Publishers Association (Black Press of America). After his death, his memoirs were compiled into a book, In the Black World.

Fleming covered nine national political conventions and met many of the leading black intellectuals and celebrities of his day, including Langston Hughes, A. Philip Randolph, Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He received numerous public honors for his work, including the Career Achievement Award for Print from the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, an annual scholarship in his name at his alma mater, and accolades in the Congressional Record. His memorial service was held at San Francisco City Hall.

When the Great Depression swallowed up his employment, he enrolled at Chico State College (today the California State University, Chico),

Early newspaper career

In 1935 he was hired by the Federal Writers' Project at the University of California, Berkeley. With the advent of World War II, he began working as a machinist for the U.S. Navy. Through the program, he became an intern in the office of future California Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown while continuing his newspaper work.

Sun-Reporter career

Fleming's closest friend since 1935 was Carlton Goodlett, an African American scholar from Omaha, who earned a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 1938 at age 23, then left to attend medical school in Nashville. During the war, San Francisco's black population grew by more than 665 percent, and Fleming urged Goodlett to return to the Bay Area and establish a medical practice there.

Fleming got the inside story on everything from the city's race riot of 1966 and the student strike at San Francisco State University – which gave birth to the nation's first ethnic studies department in 1969 – to the Jonestown tragedy of November 1978, which claimed more than 900 lives.

From 1963 to 1997, Fleming held court at the Sun-Reporter building in San Francisco's Fillmore district, writing articles, receiving phone calls, and greeting visitors as they entered. But in April 1997, when the newspaper moved across town to the Bayview district – which had replaced the Fillmore as the city's largest African American neighborhood – Fleming retired from his day-to-day duties.