Sittin’ on the mike

It was a evening assignment. The year was sometime in the early 1960s.    Somewhere on the Atlanta University complex, the Black Panthers were meeting.    We didn’t know whether they would allow reporters.   But my assignment was to try.  I was a one-man band.   I shot, reported and edited.   My then wife, Barbara, was worried about my safety.   She volunteered to go with me.   I didn’t try to talk her out of it because I figured the presence of a woman might lessen the hostility.    We knocked on the door.   Two well-dressed almost military-like men opened it.  I showed my credentials and asked permission to cover their gathering with a camera.   They said they would check.   They returned in a few moments…allowed us inside and escorted us to a place where we put our camera.   I don’t remember the specifics of the rhetoric, but it was aimed at “whitey”.   I felt uncomfortable, but recorded the story.   Back in our vehicle, both Barbara and I felt a sense of relief  heading back to the station.

We returned to WSB in a company station wagon.  The communication link with the assignment desk was 2-way radio with a microphone that was placed on a hook attached to the vehicles’s console.  There were no mobile phones in those days.     On the drive back, Barbara and I talked freely about what we had just witnessed and several personal things.  When we got back to the newsroom, an engineer  was grinning when he told me he had something in the projection room that Barbara and I should hear.  He had recorded most of the conversation between Barbara and me during our ride back to the station.    I had tossed the 2-way mike on the passenger seat instead of putting it on its hook.  Barbara keyed it open when she sat on it.  My recollection is that there was nothing incriminating, but at the time it  was embarrassing.    The engineer gave me the tape.   I promptly erased it.