Skip to content
  • About
  • Events
  • Old Crime
  • N'At
  • People
  • Places
  • Sports
  • Yinz
  • About
  • Events
  • Old Crime
  • N'At
  • People
  • Places
  • Sports
  • Yinz
September 4, 2012 / Pittsburgh n'at

Post-Gazette reporter Ray Sprigle disguises himself as a black man

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
(Photo credit: Unknown)
(Photo credit: Unknown)

Nov. 15, 1948: Ray Sprigle was a top-notch investigative journalist. “He posed as a black-market meat operator to expose graft and corruption in the war-rationing system; he got himself committed to a mental institution to prove inhumane conditions; he disguised himself as a black man traveling through the South to produce a groundbreaking 21-part series in 1948” (Post-Gazette, Sept. 16, 1986).

In 1937, Sprigle won the newspaper’s first Pulitzer Prize for a story proving that Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who was then newly appointed to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court by President Roosevelt, had been once a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Sprigle’s report was accompanied by transcripts, names, signed affidavits, Black’s application for membership in the Klan from Sept. 11, 1923, his membership dues and Black’s handwritten resignation from July 9, 1925.

This photograph captures Ray Sprigle posing as a black man for the 1948 series titled “‘I was a Negro in the South for 30 Days.” In this disguise and using the name James R. Crawford, Sprigle traveled through the South and experienced firsthand what life was like for 10 million people living under Jim Crow’s system of legal segregation.  To “pass” as an African American, as Springle writes in one of his dispatches, he “had shaved head, practically down to the skull, had my glasses reset in enormous black rims, and acquired a cap that drooped like a Tam o’Shanter.” Only twice in his month-long travels was his status as a black man “even remotely questioned.”

You might also want to see...

Topics related to this:1930s 1940s historic moments Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburghers you might not know politicians

Mila Sanina

Mila digs "The Digs" and digs when others are digging it, too. She brought "The Digs" its international fame that one time when a Russian newspaper wrote about it bit.ly/RusDigs.

Old Pittsburgh photos and stories | The Digs

Browse by topic

  • Events (150)
  • Greatest Sports Photos (5)
  • Old crime (37)
  • People (107)
  • Pittsburgh n'at (138)
  • Places and landmarks (120)
  • Sports (102)
  • World (3)
  • Yinz (18)

Follow The Digs

RSS feed RSS - Posts

Find old photos

Most read this week

  • When Hurricane Agnes slammed soggy Pittsburgh
  • Mac Miller made it famous, but 'Blue Slide Park' has a long history
  • "I think it safe to say that hard work killed her"
  • Christmas Eve streetcar tragedy
  • The death of Pretty Boy Floyd

Archives

Tags

"wow" photographs 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s baseball bridges Civic Arena Downtown Pittsburgh football Forbes Field historic moments holidays industry music and musicians North Side Oakland oddities Photographer Darrell Sapp Photographer Harry Coughanour Photographer Morris Berman Pittsburghers you know Pittsburghers you might not know Pittsburgh Pirates Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburgh skyline Pittsburgh Steelers Pittsburgh traditions Pittsburgh women politicians pollution and smog rivers stage and film street scenes The Pittsburgh Press Things that are gone Three Rivers Stadium tragedies transportation University of Pittsburgh urban development weather and seasons

Tracks WordPress Theme by Compete Themes.

 

Loading Comments...