Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Journalist became one of first black newsroom leaders
PORTLAND, Ore. — William Hilliard, who became the first black reporter at The Oregonian newspaper and later its editor in a pioneering 42-year career, died Monday at age 89.
He was one of the first African-American newsroom leaders at a major U.S. newspaper.
Hilliard was once denied a paper-route at The Oregonian because managers said whites did not want blacks delivering their paper. But after serving in the Navy and graduating from college, he was hired as a copy boy at age 25. Through talent and hard work he made his way up from there, becoming executive editor in 1982.
In 1993 he served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the first African American to hold the post. He retired in 1994.
“Every day was exciting,” he said in a 2010 interview. “It was a heck of a job.”
He was always aware that he was being judged twice, he said: once as a journalist and again as a black man in a white world.
Hilliard’s family moved from Arkansas to Portland when he was 8. A neighbor, Stephen Wright, was a black businessman who ran the only hotel in the city that allowed blacks. He became a mentor to Hilliard.
“I cut Mr. Wright’s grass and he took a liking to me,” Hilliard recalled. “At his hotel I met black entertainers and businessmen. Mr. Wright told me, showed me, that there were blacks doing things with their lives. He told me to do what I wanted to do. Get good grades in school, go to college and don’t pay attention to what anyone else says.”
Hilliard became a sports reporter at the Oregonian — the only full-time sports reporter never sent outside the office to cover a story — and also had religion and general assignment beats before being named an assistant city editor in 1965. He became city editor six years later and editor in 1982.