“But What Can I Do with a History Major?”

As yet another new academic year rolls around, many history professors at col­leges and universities across the country once again will be confronted by stu­dents asking the perennially piercing question, “But what can I do with a history major?”

Craig Flournoy and George Rodrigue had to ask themselves that same ques­tion when they graduated in the 1970s with honors degrees in history from, respectively, the University of New Orleans and the University of Virginia. Both decided on careers in journalism, ultimately joining the staff of the Dallas Morning News.

Flournoy and Rodrigue won a Pulit­zer Prize for national reporting this past April. They received this prestigious award for an investigative series entitled “Separate and Unequal,” which re­vealed continuing racial discrimination and segregation in federal housing pro­grams throughout the United States. This series was published in February 1985, during the Morning News’ centen­nial year, garnering the paper its first Pulitzer Prize.

Both reporters attributed their suc­cess as journalists partly to their training in history. Rodrigue credited honors seminars on historiography and historical research for helping him develop his “ability to research and ability to think,” and for emphasizing the importance of “verification and systematic study,” skills that he finds essential for a report­er to have.

Rodrigue’s interest in journalism complemented his study of history at Virginia, where he edited the student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. Rodrigue wrote his senior honors thesis on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, including a careful analysis of media coverage of that event.

Flournoy, who recently completed his master’s degree in history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, is espe­cially interested in the history of revolu­tions and revolutionary movements and leaders, as well as Southern history. He wrote his master’s thesis on the early life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., neatly combining these two fields of history.

Flournoy found this historical back­ground helpful in researching and writ­ing the prizewinning series. “Most good history recognizes that racial discrimination is as American as apple pie,” he regretfully noted, explaining that the results of his and Rodrigue’s investiga­tion should not be startling, though the revelation of continuing discrimination in federal housing programs “runs counter to the popular conception that we’ve cured our racial problems.”

“Both history and journalism teach you that you need to use primary sources,” Flournoy stated. He added that historians tend to define primary sources too narrowly, relying mainly on written documents and records, while journalists often concentrate on inter­ viewing people, paying less attention to written materials. Both types of sources are essential to both historians and jour­nalists, he emphasized, if the complete story is to be told.

Flournoy and Rodrigue began their investigation by spending hundreds of hours studying and comparing documents, including legal briefs, judicial opinions, US Civil Rights Commission reports, and unpublished Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) internal reports. The reporters were unaware of the existence of these HUD reports until Flournoy found them cited in footnotes in Civil Rights Commission reports and obtained them through the Freedom of Information Act.

This kind of intensive research was a necessary preliminary to conducting field interviews, Flournoy noted, for a very simple reason: “You’re going to know what questions to ask.” The two reporters subsequently travelled to for­ty-seven cities around the country, in­terviewing hundreds of people, includ­ing tenants in federally subsidized hous­ing projects and current and former local and federal housing officials.

What their research and interviews revealed was, according to Rodrigue, a twenty-year “history of abuse and feder­al negligence.” Government officials at all levels “were still saying the things they said twenty years ago,” while racial problems in federal housing programs continued to increase. The resulting se­ries traced that history and examined its results in great detail, supported by sidebars illustrating the shattering per­sonal effects of discrimination on indi­vidual tenants.

Flournoy’s and Rodrigue’s success as journalists demonstrates that an under­ graduate major in history can provide valuable and marketable skills. Not ev­ery student who majors in history will succeed as a journalist, both were quick to caution, but students can improve their chances by writing for or editing a student newspaper and by taking his­tory seminars that stress thinking and analytical skills, as well as other social science courses which provide valuable research tools and methodologies.

Flournoy noted that he had observed some hostility between academic histori­ans and journalists while working for the Morning News and studying for his master’s degree simultaneously. That, he and Rodrigue believe, is unfortunate since both journalism and formal his­torical research are integral parts of the historical record.

Rodrigue urged historians to provide “more popularization of meaningful historical research, to get it out of his­torical journals and into the newspa­pers.” If written well, they maintained, this can be done without trivializing or compromising historical research, and will make history more accessible and comprehensible to more people. Their prizewinning series provides a good ex­ample of how this goal can be achieved. “Historians and journalists are the last  of the underpaid generalists in the world,” Rodrigue concluded, noting that they should work more closely to­gether.