Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers

Newsman Looks Back At 44-Year Career At CBS News

(CBS) 
At the time, the civil rights movement was beginning to explode, and Rather reported on the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his attempt not to let the voter registration movement in Leesburg and the rest of South Georgia fail.
But Rather also reported on groups at the other extreme: the Ku Klux Klan, and the White Citizens Council, who were determined to keep segregation as it was.

"I was gape-mouthed and bug-eyed most of the time about what I was seeing," recalls Rather, of some of the protests he witnessed. "People would come out of, seemingly, out of the woodwork or out of the shrubbery, and hit people with clubs. Particularly, cameramen were sometimes beaten. In place after place, we were spat upon by the worst elements of the community and called the 'Colored Broadcasting System.'"

Rather says that although he had grown up in a segregated society, he had no idea "of what it was really like to be black and live in terror and in fear."

"It changed me dramatically as a person. In place after place after place," says Rather. "There was viciousness against women, children, churches."

Rather also covered Alabama Gov. George Wallace's battle against the government to prevent black students from entering an all-white University of Alabama.

"I will not allow the University of Alabama to be desegregated," said Wallace, who tried to stop students from entering the building. "I will stand in the school house door and stop you. ... I stand here today as governor of this sovereign state and refuse to willingly submit to the illegal usurpation of power by the central government."

Looking back at the experience, Rather says, "We were covering this live. But we couldn't have live camera coverage on the campus. This setup by which we put this on television was so Neanderthal by television standards now. Nelson Benton, my colleague, would be there. I would be just off-campus on a telephone hook-up with him. He would describe for me what was happening. And then I, live to New York, would relay his descriptions by telephone."

"Television has many weaknesses, but one of the strengths of television is that it can put you there. You can see of yourself, hear for yourself, and make a judgment for yourself what the reality was," adds Rather. "And the reality was really ugly. And eventually the country, as a whole said, 'We can't abide this, we can't stand this,' and made changes."

In November 1963, Rather was assigned to cover President John F. Kennedy's trip to Dallas, Texas, a journey that ended in tragedy.

"I was in Dallas, Nov. 22, for what we all thought would be a reasonably routine day," recalls Rather, who was waiting for the motorcade to pass by when suddenly it was clear something was very wrong. It was soon reported that shots had been fired at the motorcade.

"There was a clear panic," says Rather. "People were still on the ground, fathers trying to cover mothers and children, and the president -- a high probability he'd been hit, the possibility that he'd actually been killed. But we didn't know anything."

Rather dialed the hospital: "I just begged them to give me somebody, and eventually got a doctor and a priest, who just matter-of-factly said the president was dead."

CBS Evening News Anchor Walter Cronkite announced the news on television: "We just have a report from our correspondent, Dan Rather in Dallas, that he has confirmed that President Kennedy is dead."

"We had convinced ourselves that this kind of thing doesn't happen in America," says Rather "I didn't have any real doubts, but we were on the air for some long minutes before any official announcement that the president of the United States was dead."

Cronkite later reported: "From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, that President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. CST, 2 o'clock EST, some 38 minutes ago."

"After the initial hammer to the heart, and sledge to the psyche, the strongest feeling in my mind was what a terrible thing for the country. What a terrible thing for the Kennedy family," says Rather, of President Kennedy's funeral.

"Somebody said, at somewhere along the line afterward, 'We broke the story of the president's death before the official announcement.' I remember saying 'So what?' You know, the country matters. The Kennedy family matters. Where we go from here now, the future, matters."