Missing Pages

About this book

Wallace Terry got the idea to do a book on black journalists while teaching at Howard University. He explains in his Author’s Note why he took on the project: “I picked up an acclaimed book on the history of war correspondents. At first glance, it seemed a perfect selection for a course I was teaching on the role of the foreign correspondent. I was hardly surprised to see that no black correspondents were mentioned, although they had covered World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Vietnam War. Black journalists were usually missing from historical accounts of war.” “What stunned me, however, was the story of a British correspondent who claimed that he had rescued the bodies of four white journalists murdered by Viet Cong sappers in the Vietnam War. I knew this story was a lie because I was there, and he wasn’t. In reality, the rescue was made by me and another American correspondent. Why, I asked, was I left unmentioned? Was it because I was black? That’s when I made up my mind to research and write a book about black journalists, beginning with World War II and taking them through the civil rights movement in America and the Vietnam War. This work would help fill the missing pages in the history of modern American journalism.”

Themes & subjects

About the author

Wallace Terry

21 Apr 1938 – 29 May 2003

Wallace Houston Terry, II (April 21, 1938 – May 29, 2003) was an African-American journalist and oral historian, best known for his book about black soldiers in Vietnam, *Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War *(1984), which served as a basis for the 1995 crime thriller *Dead Presidents*. Terry had a wide-ranging and eclectic career that reflected his many interests. Though primarily a journalist, he was also an ordained minister in the Church of the Disciples of Christ, and worked as a radio and television commentator, public lecturer, and advertising executive. He taught journalism at Howard University and The College of William & Mary, where he sat on the board of trustees. **S…