Mal Goode: Breaking Barriers in Broadcast Journalism

It's time for another episode of I Am Northwest Arkansas, the podcast covering the intersection of business, culture, entrepreneurship, and life in general here in the Ozarks. Whether you are considering a move to this area or trying to learn more about the place you call home, we've got something special for you.

Here's our host, Randy Wilburn. Hey, folks, and welcome back to another episode of I Am Northwest Arkansas.

I'm your host, Randy Wilburn, and I am recording this remote today, this particular episode, and it's because I'm actually getting ready to go on a trip at the time of recording, and I wanted to make sure I didn't reschedule this particular episode because it's. It's one that is near and dear to my heart. I am sitting down and.

Well, before I tell you who I'm sitting down with, I want to kind of share just a little bit of a backstory. I've told you over and over again, the reason why I love getting behind a mic is because of a man named Mal Good. He was my grandfather.

I grew up with him, and something resided in me for years and years and years, so that by the time I actually started podcasting, I already had so much ingrained in me just by virtue of being around this person for so long. And, you know, I know a lot of us have stories about our grandparents and what they mean to us.

And I'm very thankful to have had both sets of my grandparents were alive during my formative years, and I really learned a lot from all of them. But there was something special about my grandfather, Mal Good, beyond just his achievements that really left an indelible mark and impression on me.

And because of him, I am the man that I am today.

And for those of you that listen to this podcast on a regular basis and hear the stories that I tell and the platform that I've created and the people that I share this with, he is the reason why I'm able to do that. And so I thought it would be appropriate. My grandfather, for the longest time, should have written a book. He just never got to do it.

There are so many great individuals in this world that never get to sit down and write their life story right, because they're living it. And he was living it. He literally was living it.

I can remember we took his keys away from him at 83 years of age when he was still driving in to the United nations and posting audio stories on the National Black Network. And this is all real. So, you know, I tell people all the time, my grandfather, he only retired because we took his license away from him.

But needless to say, there is a book now that finally does his life justice. It's called Mal Good, the Life and Work of a Black Broadcast Trailblazer.

And it's written by two amazing individuals, Leanne Sukas and Rob Ruck, both from the University of Pittsburgh, my grandfather's alma mater. And it was so appropriate that this whole process came together and they were able to put this book together, but it took years for them to do that.

And I know this is a long preamble, but Leanne and Rob, I want to welcome you guys. And first of all, I want to just say thank you. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of myself and all of our family members.

We can't thank you guys enough for taking my grandfather's life and putting it in a capsule for everybody to enjoy. And this book is beyond words, and I can't wait to really get into the process and just the stories that you learned about him.

But I just want to welcome you guys, the I Am Northwest Arkansas podcast. And thank you so much for sitting down with me to just share a little bit about this research process and putting this book together.

Thank you, Randy. It's great to be here.

Yeah, thanks.

Is a two way street in that I think that both Leanne and I feel pretty privileged to have had the chance to get to know Malgood and his family and his life over the years, have the opportunity to write this book.

Yeah. Yeah. Well. Well, both of you guys and I, Rob, I've read your other book. You have?

You wrote a book about the Polynesian culture and football, and it's such a great book. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And.

And you guys are at the University of Pittsburgh, which is an outstanding institution in and of itself. I mean, my grandfather was the biggest fanboy for Pitt that you would ever want to know.

I mean, every time we went to Pittsburgh, he would take me to the Cathedral of Learning and just. It was just something about Pitt that really was innate and ingrained in him.

So I think it was so appropriate that you guys were the ones that were able to unearth his whole story and memorialize it in this book. So I really appreciate that. I wanted to start going back to the beginning.

I know I Actually don't know the whole story about how you guys got connected with my Uncle Bob and some others to write the book, but maybe just tell the story about why you chose to take on this project and write this book.

Good.

And a couple years later, when I began working on a documentary, Kings on the Hill, about the Negro Leagues, I got in touch with Mal, and he was one of the voices, along with August Wilson and Tini Harris and Buck Leonard, who appeared in the documentary while interviewing Mal. And I think it was about a three hour interview. He talked about a lot more than baseball. He talked about Homestead.

He talked about working in the mills. He talked about civil rights. And years later, when two of Ronald's siblings, Roberta and Bob, came to me and said, would you write that book?

I said I would on one condition. That Leanne is part of the process.

That's awesome. I love that. And why were you so bent on having Leanne as part of that process?

Well, for a couple of reasons.

At first, I knew that while I thought I could handle the sport part of this book and a lot of the Pittsburgh parts of this book, well, I needed an historian of the African American experience to be a part of this.

Secondly, when you can collaborate with a wonderful person and have fun doing it, it makes the process a lot more fun, but also it makes the end product better. And biographies are far more complicated than anything else I've tackled.

Yeah, yeah, that's the truth. I mean, I've read. I'm a big.

I love biographies, you know, and I think of, like, Chernow and some of the other great biographers out there and Isaacson and others. I mean, it's just.

There's so much work that goes on behind the scenes that you never really appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into putting these books out. And, I mean, we just get to read them. I mean, we go on Amazon or you go to your favorite bookstore and buy these books.

But there's so much behind the scenes that goes into it. And I didn't realize it until after reading the book and going through it. And the fact that you guys.

I mean, here's somebody that I'm so close to that I knew, and yet. And still I didn't, you Know what I'm saying? And it was. There was so much that you unearth I just had no idea about.

And it was like, man, I'm in my 50s and I'm just learning about this now, about my grandfather and what he was, what he did, and about his family's history.

I mean, you guys did an amazing job unearthing so many stories and also the through line of history and how you married that to my grandfather's life, I thought was amazing.

The records were voluminous.

You remember your grandfather, you spoke of him as a constant reader and writer and on the phone, phone ringing, doorbell ringing, like there was constant activity around him.

But the records were far and wide and diverse because there was the history of the enslavement, the migration, the millwork, Homestead, Pennsylvania, but then into education and ultimately a local civil rights, broad civil rights, the Alphas, the Pitt, naacp, and then ultimately into a national media format. So the action was swift. He seemed to be involved in everything.

And in addition to Rob and I took a trip to Virginia, where your great grandparents came from.

In addition to the work of the historian to searching through tedious records, trying to piece together pieces that had never really been fully told, your father also left drafts of chapters, speeches, biographies, not to mention the voluminous collection at the University of Missouri, at the School of Journalism. His archive we also had. He was recording his voice. He was carbon copies of letters. He was a man.

That was, as one of your cousins said, granddad was busy. Right. And we had to collect all of the artifacts of the busy.

Yeah, it's amazing too.

And I remember I used to, when I was a kid, it was a big deal for me for two reasons, to go into New York on the weekends in the 70s with him to go to the United Nations. One is because he knew everybody and they treated him like royalty. Like I would walk into the United Nations.

And of course, you know, security was a much lax back in the 70s. We just didn't. We weren't dealing with the same issues that we're dealing with now.

But I can just remember walking with unfettered access throughout the United nations, sitting in interpreter booths, going into the Security Council room and just sitting there pretending that I'm leading the world. And you know, of course, I always went over to New York because I was promised a pretzel.

And you know, if you haven't had a New York pretzel, you haven't had a pretzel. Right. So. So. And people from Pennsylvania know that.

But the bottom line was that it was just, it was, I can remember just, it was just routine for him to do what he did. But he was always writing letters, he was always sending somebody something, a word of encouragement, some advice, some guidance.

And you know, I think that's really what I think kind of enabled you guys to capture so much information because he literally documented everything and we only.

Hit the tip of the iceberg. I mean you're right about the thickness of his connections and relationship.

People would write him because they had heard him speak or saw something he had written and ask for help and he would write back in these single spaced, multi page letters suggesting things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty impressive. So, so take me back. I mean you guys spent almost what, six years on this book or am I discounting the amount of time?

I think we're closer to eight, Randy. Okay, okay.

So that's what I thought.

That's what I thought from beginning to end.

Eight.

Yeah.

Did you. It was going to take that long?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean when you write a book and you have full time jobs and you have a lot going on, you work on a book intermittently and the tough thing is to stay connected to it and not give up on the project. But we knew we'd finish. It was just a matter of finding the time to do it.

Yeah, yeah.

We also, along the way, I mean with everything we discovered, we discovered more that we thought no book is ever finished, I'm sure, and no life is ever told fully.

But there were just one thing about your grandfather, and this is no surprise to you, is that he left such an impression on people that once we found people who knew him, they wanted to tell us the stories.

And so we were also really, through graciousness of your family and access to everybody in the family, able to put together a really sort of behind the scenes view of him as well. Cause we know what his public Persona was.

But it became really interesting to look at the family history and what was going on and how he and your grandmother Mary together forged, you know, this life that had so much positive impact on so many. And those records were harder to find. Right. But we found what we could through voices and through recollections and through people.

And you also know your family loves to tell these stories. Right. So, you know, they were willing and we spoke to all of the kids, you know, unfortunately and sadly we lost two during the process.

But we spoke to them Bob extensively and Russell as well.

So we spoke with everyone and got full perspectives on everything that was going on and heard Great stories that just made it a far richer, more personal endeavor than we expected at the start, I think.

Yeah. What would you say? I mean, as you and I'd love to just kind of start looking at it from the historical aspect of it. What were your.

Were there any really big aha moments as you kind of delved into the history of the family? Because what I thought was really interesting was that you made some direct connections about how that there was.

There were different levels of understanding of the importance of education in the family, and that also how that played a part in just how my grandfather developed and that he always saw education as kind of like a call that he had to answer.

You know, I think one of the surprising things for me was how different the experiences and, as you say, educational level of Mal's mother and his father. They came from two different parts of Virginia.

One was a pretty harsh version of slavery from a part of the state in which a lot of the people who had been enslaved were no longer profitable for their slave owners are sold off.

And Mao's father got a few days of school when he was 8 years old, and that was it until he met Mary, who came from the Shenandoah Valley, where it wasn't so much gang labor as the system in which people who were enslaved were rented out for a year, which kept families more intact. And the Shenandoah Valley was, frankly, a better, less harsh kind of slavery.

Where your great grandmother got an education, she, too, joined the Great Migration, came to Pittsburgh, they met, and, you know, I don't know what their prenuptial agreements were, but, you know, education and the kids going to college was something that she insisted. And your great grandfather was fine to go along with.

And I think that shaped the family, and I think it reflects some of the class and point of origin differences and tensions among the African American community that were exacerbated during the Great Migration in the north, where you had both that op. Old Pittsburgh community, better off, better educated, more secure.

And you have the Great Migration bringing people from the countryside, unused to urban or industrial life. And I think your family helped bring those tensions and differences together and mediate.

And I think that was very much what Mal was as a bridge builder who could go back and forth among different groups in black America, both in Homestead, then Pittsburgh and then the country.

Yeah, you know, I mean, it's. Again, the book is just. I had to. Honestly, I'll be very.

To be honest with you, because I was so close to him and to the story, I had to put it down at times it was hard.

There were parts of it that were just hard to read when you realize just the amount of, of challenges that he had to go through to ultimately get to where he was going. Right. I mean, he didn't become. He didn't try out or get to audition for ABC until he was 54 years of age. He had already had a heart attack.

He had been through a lot. I mean, most people at that point are like, you know what? I'm done. I'm going to retire and call it a day.

And here he is just starting a whole new career.

And I don't know, I don't know how that sat with you guys as you process that and went through that, but I would love your interactions with just kind of looking at that and really looking at the timeline and being like, man, again, just like what I said, he was embarking upon a new career midlife and how much of a difference it made at that point in time.

Well, a new career, midlife, when life was shorter as well, and a new career that was literally a new media format as well. So breaking through in that it required moving the family to a community they did not know anyone in.

It required the family being in different places because some of the kids were in college and beyond, some were still home and in high school. I mean, the level of commitment and transition it took and just sort of jumping off into this brave new world is stunning to us.

And then he got there and he had to find his own path. I mean, television journalism was a new thing. He was the first African American to be hired by ABC and by any of the networks.

And literally getting from Teaneck as, you know, into New York, you know, driving over that, it just is an amazing. The, just the, the confidence he had, the faith that he had.

Because we also really found the story that really the faith was what got the family through so much and a belief that you were part of a larger that was going to have benefit people widely and that you had been chosen for this reason. And I think that he just rose to every single one of those occasions and just never looked back and went into everything with tremendous energy.

Not looking like someone who was slowing down, right? Like somebody who was ramping up.

I would add that he faced incredible pressure to be successful at this, just as Jackie Robinson did, wondering what would happen if I failed. And, you know, I think if Mal had not succeeded at abc, it would have delayed the integration of broadcast television for years.

And he had enormous self confidence. Now, where that comes from in anybody, it's hard to know. But you need that self confidence to succeed, particularly in a public arena.

And you're right. He overcome a lot of obstacles. He gets out of high school, he works in the mill, he starts Pitt. He works nights in the steelworks.

He is not coming from the kind of class background that most of the African American students at Pitt came from.

And yet he not only is comfortable in the mill with people who had a 9th or 10th grade education at best, he is accepted into the alphas and recognized for having leadership qualities at that point.

Yeah. You know, and as. As I think about that and as you were telling the story in the book and it was. You were.

You were relating so many things, you know, I. It never. I don't think my grandfather. I wouldn't say. Well, yeah, I guess fearless would be a word. I mean, he just did not.

He was not afraid of anyone or anything when it came to certainly right and wrong. Right. I mean, that.

That I saw definitely growing up in my town of Teaneck, New Jersey, because he would take anyone and everyone to task, including the board of education, the mayor, you name it, and not in. I never, as a kid growing up in the city, I never had any issues with anybody, cops or otherwise, because they all knew who my grandfather was.

But I think that.

I think it's interesting, as you were relating some of the stories of how it was when he was younger, when he worked at the department store and when he saw things were just not right, he was always willing to be that voice of reason, to stand up to it and say, why is it this way and what can't we change this? And I think that, you know, I don't know. I mean, he just. He was just cut from a different cloth, I feel like. And yes, he was.

It was instilled in him by his parents and certainly his father. But he was taught to not fear anybody and to really treat others the way that he wanted to be treated and demand the same in return.

One of my favorite stories that we dug up is do you remember? And teenage Theodora and Archie Lacey. Do you remember?

Absolutely.

Right.

Ms. Lacey was my. My sixth grade.

Right.

And she's still my favorite teacher ever. Don't tell my mother that, but she's still my favorite. My mama never taught me, but. But my mom was a contemporary of hers and.

But Theo Lacey, who is in her 90s. I actually just visited her not too long ago in Teaneck. But she was amazing. And I am a lot of the person that I am today.

Because of the impact she had on me in sixth grade at Longfellow Elementary School.

Well, and now. Have you seen the school that's named after her now?

Yes, absolutely. So well deserved. Yeah.

So your audience would probably like to hear the story that.

One of the stories that Theodore Lacey told us was that there was an assignment where you had to dress up as your historical hero, and you dressed up as your grandfather, as Mal Good. And that Mal was there. And she said she remembers Mal beaming when Randy came in and I am Mal Good. And did the whole thing as other kids were.

Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, you were. As Mal Good. Theodore Lacey tells also is, you know, sort of captures the essence of your grandparents.

And one of the things she said is that when they were doing all their work with school integration and making a lot of enemies, that your grandfather, basically, by today's nomenclature, had their back. Right. So he said, I'm not canvassing door to door, but you got me.

And she said, he would walk into board meetings that were contentious, and you would feel the air in the room change because people were like, mal's here. And Mal came and informed. He named names. He was clear. He was honest.

But she said he was unvicious, which made him very effective in all those settings in which progress was being fought for and struggled for. And in the end, he made his point. He didn't make enemies, but he made his point. And that is.

She said, he was the greatest advocate they could have had in any of those processes in teenage.

Yeah, you know, he did have a way of telling you about yourself, but in such a way where you didn't. You didn't.

Like, he could dress you down and still make you feel good about it at the end, where you're like, you know, maybe, yeah, you have a point there. I get. I get that. So I thought that was. You're absolutely right.

And I wasn't privy to all of those meetings, but I would hear people tell me stories about that, even at ABC News, Some of the younger editors and people that I got to work with when I was there in the late 90s, working at World News Tonight and Nightline, you know, they told me stories about my grandfather and about how he helped them stand up for themselves. And One guy, Jim McIver, he was like, that was why I was still here at that point in time.

That's why he would say, that's why I'm still here at ABC News. If it wasn't for your grandfather, I wouldn't be here. And he would show people how to do that.

Because he said, you know, you get way more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.

And you can give a little vinegar, but you better be sure to back it up with some honey there and, you know, help people to understand, just treat people right. And I think that's important. I do want to back up, though, just to add one piece to the story that you told.

I remember putting talcum powder in my hair that day for that, because we all had to. It was like a wax museum. And. And I remember putting it. It took me, like, three days to get that talking powder out of my hair, because I was.

I tried to pretend I had gray hair. But what I do remember most is that there was one young man standing to my right. His name was Derek Sims. He passed.

He just recently passed, but he went to school with me, and he was Jackie Robinson. And of course, you know, my grandfather had to say. To let him know, you know, Jackie was a dear friend of mine. And so.

So he was in the middle of him telling story. He was like, yep. And I was there when that happened, and I was there when. And then somebody on the other side was Thurgood Marshall.

And he was like, thurgood is a good friend of mine telling him stories. And it was so funny that. But he would do it in a way where he was never grandstanding. Right. It was always just, you know, matter of fact.

And back to Jackie specifically, I wondered. I mean, I know it wasn't lost on you guys. And I always tell this when I ever. I tell the story about my grandfather joining abc.

And it didn't hit me till later on. I said, it took a trailblazer to create a trailblazer in the sense that my grandfather was fully formed when he joined abc.

He was very good at what he did. That's the one thing I do understand. He was quick on his feet. He could improvise.

But it took somebody like Jackie Robinson, who had himself broken a barrier to ensure and enable somebody else breaking a barrier. And I don't know. I think sometimes. I mean, to me, that's why this book is so important, because people need to understand the connectivity of.

Of the history of the black experience in America and how so many people forged paths that then others took. And that my grandfather got on Jackie even though they were contemporaries. Actually, my grandfather was a little older than Jackie.

That they got on each other's shoulders and helped each other out.

And I think that has to be a lesson that comes out of books like this and stories like Jackie talking to ABC News saying, hey, you need to hire a black person here, and then kind of going from there. But I don't know what you guys thought about that or if that was kind of an aha moment for you.

I mean, I think you absolutely capture the ways in which people's connections were used to advance a larger movement. I mean, Mal benefited from people who took a chance with him. I mean, he graduated Pitt and he's working essentially as a janitor in a clothing store.

But friends like Everett Utterback, who was a great athlete and lawyer, judges, people who knew Mal gave him a boost up. But he was always doing the same for people.

I mean, he mentored Jackie, he mentored Henry Aaron, and they, in turn did what they could to do something for him. And I think you're also right that Mao was fully formed by the time he got to abc.

And I think what formed him was his work on radio in Pittsburgh from the time he was 40 years old, when he starts to do a show for the Pittsburgh Courier and he develops.

I mean, in a way, he's a natural for radio because of his voice and his presence and the educational background that made him, when he spoke, deliver not a rhetorical address, but. But something that was based on fact and to interpret from there.

And in the process, he becomes a very important figure in the black community as the most militant voice for radical change for civil rights. And that entailed risk where at times he's being driven around Pittsburgh in the trunk of a car to avoid the police.

It involves countless confrontations in the region where police are threatening to arrest him, and he just doesn't give an inch.

Yeah. And, you know, I had heard a little bit about him driving around in the trunk, and I remember my uncles talking about that.

I mean, you guys brought it home in the book. And it was just like, wow, you know, you think about that. It's like, who lives like that?

But it was how people survived in certain instances and situations.

So there is one thing I wanted to connect and ask about because I know, you know, and I would tell stories about the fact that, you know, my grandfather was friends with Art Rooney, the Rooneys of who own the Pittsburgh Steelers. And then I talked about how Willie Mays used to come to the house. I was never privy to any of that experience. Right.

And I guess Willie Stargell had given my grandfather several tickets to all of the games in Pittsburgh in that season when they won the World Series there. The last one they won, I might add. But that's a whole nother story. But I am a suffering bucko, and that's okay.

But the long and short of it was I remember just, you know, seeing how, I mean, here these guys are at the top of their game, and when they saw my grandfather, these guys lost it. Omar Moreno, Willie Stargill, it's like Mao, Mao, Mao. And.

And I remember, you know, how much of an impact he had on all these different sports players. And my mom always tells me the story about.

And I GUESS it was 72, whenever they had the earthquake in Nicaragua and Roberto Clemente was going to provide resources to them. And that's when he died in his plane crash. You know, it was one of the only times that my mom ever remembers seeing him cry.

Like, literally, like he fell down, lost it. But, you know, it's amazing when you see the impact that one person can have on other people, and vice versa, right? I mean, because.

And he would say it all the time. Roberto Clemente would say, mal, I'm black. I mean, and he would say it in kind of broken English. You know, he would.

He couldn't understand why people would make a big deal about being black and about, you know, why would give him a hard time at being as a black ball player. And my grandfather kind of tutored him throughout that whole process.

And it's just, you know, it's amazing when you think of these icons of sport, what they went through behind the scenes, and how there was always somebody there, a soothsayer, otherwise, that would kind of help them navigate that process.

And I believe my grandfather was a big time navigator for so many of these ball players, Especially at that point in time when even I don't care you could play as great as you did, you still weren't as accepted in the world as people certainly are nowadays. It's a whole different ball game.

But they faced racial prejudice and obstacles every day of their life. And Mal wasn't that much older than them, but he was old enough to be somebody who could offer them guidance and counsel.

And as late as the 70s, decades later, when things are changing but haven't totally changed, he's somebody they all recognize as somebody who helped them make it to where they got.

Yeah, I mean, it's like he lived like six or seven lives in terms of the different generations and people that he impacted. I'm curious to. Just to get a better understanding of what you found in looking at just the 10 year career at ABC.

I remember all the stories he would tell me, of course, and you know, the famous stories about tapes not making it into World News Tonight and or what was world at the time? It was just the evening news, but things like that, having to work with cameramen that didn't quite respect you and all of that.

Yeah, I mean, it's such a great question. And it was such a rich decade for so many reasons. I mean, historically we are in the uptick of the civil rights movement.

You know, black America is on the news more. There is a certain characterization of the struggle that Mal wants to correct.

He wants to be sure that the, you know, diverse black experience is there.

So he's both reporting on the news while also trying to shape both the news as it's being written and an understanding of who is watching the news, both the audience and who's reporting, who's consuming. So there's that. But Mal is totally Mal, he gets there.

Any sort of slight he has or indignity, he addresses and confronts without raising his voice, without just being clear. And those things change. I mean, the stories about how the tapes would get lost, Mal himself says.

But then before long people would say, the cameraman would say, mal, let's do that again. You didn't look right. Let's try that again. I don't like what was in the background, he said.

So these initial kind of obstructionists became his advocates. Yeah, so just as you said, he has this magical, great, charismatic, but such a dignified quality that all of that moved forward.

He fought fights daily. He certainly became. He made clear what the line was of behavior he would accept.

We've had lots of stories of how this Was like a rough and tumble environment. Right. They needed to get breaking news, they needed to get sponsors that people were getting fired, hired. Nobody knew how to make TV news work.

And so he was sort of roiled in all that as well, but that if anything happened because of his race, because of his position, because of anything, he would address it. And they said Mal was the only one in that area that would go up to the news director and say, you know what?

I'm not going to be spoken to like that again. And he would say, I have children and grandchildren. They would be embarrassed to see me tolerate that.

So if you have something to say, please say it, but never like that again. And then he'd come back and sit calmly at his seat. So he sort of always controlled a lot of these situations.

Not to say he wasn't frustrated because as civil rights became a bigger mainstream story, he wasn't put on those stories.

Yeah, I think that was a challenge for him, too, especially because he knew all the principles. Right. I mean, he was friends with Malcolm X. He and Martin Luther King were not only fraternity brothers, but they were friends.

I mean, he knew anyone he wanted to talk to. I don't know if this was true, but I was told that there was. My grandmother was one of the first people that they called when they.

When Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom because he had my grandfather's card in his pocket. Now, that was a story that I heard. I heard that story multiple times. There's, you know, you know how there is.

You don't know what if it's accurate or not. But I mean, I do know people that knew Malcolm X and they said that, you know, Malcolm X didn't trust anybody in the press except for my grandfather.

I mean, there were very few people that he would even talk to.

And your grandfather is the only journalist who's named in his autobiography.

Right.

So, I mean, we. And you know how family lore and legend goes.

Yeah.

You know, we had to, as historians of the story, we had to be be sure that we were getting. And some things I would say shocked us. We were like, that's not true. And then we'd get down to it and we'd be like, oh, my goodness, that is true.

You know, like, it just seemed fantastical, but it wasn't. And I think the story that most defines this is when he was not put on to cover Martin Luther King's funeral.

Yeah, yeah.

And how he went into the news director and he said, I'm not on that list. But I'm going. And that is it.

And that when he gets there, all of the people that are being interviewed by the mainstream news reporters all leave midair, interview to see Mal and go talk to him.

Wow.

So, you know that literally, it's like a wave of humans leaving these reporters when they see he's there and they all go to him. They want him to tell the story. They want him to capture what this moment meant.

Yeah.

In addition to confronting the resistance and indignities he faced as a path breaker, he faces a larger question, which is how do you get the networks to look at black America in a more complex and nuanced way? I mean, they were happy to show riots and assassinations and trouble because that would attract viewers.

But Mao wanted them to look more deeply that there were dynamics of development and growth and resistance in that community that weren't being treated. And he kept pushing ABC to look at these questions. And to some extent, he was successful. But, you know, it was a struggle.

And, you know, those 11 years at ABC, from 62 to 73, the world's changing, right?

And when he starts in 62, we're still a year away from Martin Luther King's speech in Washington, the Civil Rights act, the Voter Rights act, the explosion of a black power movement. And Mao chronicles that along the way. And not just on the news, on television and radio.

In the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of talks he gives throughout the country, he is telling people, he is reporting on what's going on and what those changes mean. And I think he probably felt pretty frustrated on what he had not been able to accomplish, despite how much he had accomplished.

Yeah, I know. And it's like, man, you think about it, when I got to abc, I went into the archives and just about watched every piece of footage that I could.

And I think that the footage that really stuck with me the most. I mean, of course, I saw all the stuff with him and Malcolm and Muhammad Ali, who he. Who he used to talk to quite a bit.

But it's always watching him when he was down in Mississippi covering the Poor People's March, that really brought it home for me. He was kind of in there, right. And I think that was kind of his element. And I thought.

I always thought that was really interesting, because if you look at it today and today's, you're like, oh, man, that doesn't seem like that would have been. Not that it wasn't a compelling story, but it wasn't the kind of story that would, as we like to say, move the Crowd.

When you think about, oh, this is. Sponsors will love to be part of this particular story or what arc of information. But that wasn't the kind of story that it was.

I mean, and he had just leaned into it and was telling and weaving tales of everybody that he came in contact with and just sharing their story. And I, I thought it was really interesting the amount of time and effort that he put into that.

And, and he's at this point in time, he's, you know, he said is early 60s. So I mean, this is. It was. Yeah, that really stuck with me. I think it stuck with me then.

And then reading about it again is really, you know, just a reminder of sometimes there are things that you're going to have to do in life that you're not going to get a lot of.

Thanks for it now, but later on down the road, people will realize the stand that you took and what you decided to do and will recognize it for what it was.

I think going down to Mississippi, to the Delta town, which in many ways inspired the poor people's campaign for Martin Luther King Jr. Was something Mal had to do. It was his tribute to Martin and he went to that town, he got on that mule train and he tried to make their voices heard.

Mal could speak to any leader in black America, but he wanted to talk to sharecroppers and domestic workers and people who worked in pharmacies and steel workers. And that campaign, which he followed up by going to Washington D.C. to the end, was something he just felt compelled to do.

Yeah. You know, and it's so funny because it's one of the reasons why on this particular podcast I am Northwest Arkansas.

I mean, we cover the intersection of business, culture, entrepreneurship and life. But, you know, my whole thing is I've been able to create a platform where I just, I create an opportunity for regular people to tell their stories.

I don't really interview a lot of like a level people as far as celebrities or anything like that, or even the, the heads of cities or mayors or anything like politicians. I don't, I don't do that.

I just, I just talk to regular, everyday folks because I think that people need to see other people doing things that they want to do, and I think that will ultimately inspire them.

And I think in, in doing what my grandfather was doing, I think it probably helped a lot of people, you know, get over, you know, whatever they were struggling with, especially as African Americans.

And ultimately, I was just thinking he was optimistic.

You know, he gave his speeches, would often start with the progress he'd seen in a certain town, one speech he gave where he said, last time I was in this town at a bank, white people were allowed to just move ahead of black people in the line. And now I see black tellers.

So, you know, he was always in awe of the progress and he wanted to report on that because he wanted to encourage people that this fight was worth it, that we are getting somewhere and that you have to stay, you know, doggedly in pursuit of justice at all times.

Yeah.

So what would you say as you guys, if you look at the later chapters of his life, what were the biggest moments for you guys where you were like, wow, okay. Because I know for me. So he finished at ABC at 72. That's when he retired. Because I guess they had like some kind of mandatory retiring thing. So.

And then all I remember when this was when I was young, so, because I was born in 69, but I remember him just, it seemed like twice a week he was somewhere getting a key to a city or speaking somewhere. I mean, literally, it was like. And I remember sometimes answering the phone as a kid, it would be like, so and so calling.

Yeah, I'm calling your grandfather to invite him to such and such. And you know, of course he'd go. And my grandmother always got. Sometimes she'd get upset with him because he wasn't getting paid for any of this.

I mean, he truly became an ambassador. Right.

He not only became an ambassador for broadcast journalism, I mean, he, he was an ambassador for African Americans, especially if he got one key to a Southern city, he got a thousand keys to like, every major Southern city and even the small Southern cities and honorary degrees. And it just went on and on. I'm curious to know, what did you find as a through line in that period post ABC News?

In terms of my grandfather's life and, you know, what he was doing at.

That time, he stayed active and he never stopped. There's a Yiddish term, ants in your pants.

Yeah.

And you know, it's not just that he'd go to a city and give a talk. He'd go to a city and give four or five talks and then he would answer on his typewriter, correspondence and follow ups.

I mean, the thickness of his connections in black America were extraordinary. If he gave a thousand talks, I wouldn't be surprised. And I think he wasn't about creating his brand at all.

He was about giving voice to other people's concerns and needs and trying to speak with them and allow him to become, I guess, the way in which Their voices were heard. And he did that. He did that for the people he met in Africa when he went there to do seminars.

He did it for Pittsburgh his entire life, for Teaneck and a hundred other black neighborhoods and communities.

Yeah, it really did. He did make a difference. So. Wow. I mean, it. There's a lot to unpack. I wish I had time to talk about everything.

I mean, you really, you guys, I really appreciate you going deeply into kind of some of the family stories and just the story of my grandparents, my grandfather. And I mean, he just absolutely doted on my grandmother, Mary Lavelle.

Good.

And. And she was. She was an amazing grandmother, to say the least. But he, you know, rightfully so. I mean, he really just, you know, he.

He always gave her the kid glove treatment.

And I love the way you captured, you know, what that relationship was like early on, even some of the challenges when her mother was ill, and just in terms of the multi generational households that you had to endure sometimes and how that helped and sometimes you just had to roll with it because that's kind of the way that it goes. And. And you captured all of it.

So I just want to say thank you so much for doing that and being so sensitive to just the different storylines and how they all interconnected. I will say this, you know, and even as my grandfather was a real civil rights icon, I like to call him.

I mean, he had friends of every hue, you know, And I don't know if you guys, I don't think.

I don't remember you guys talking about Lenny Edelson in the book, but Lenny Edelson was a local pharmacist in Pittsburgh who my grandfather had befriended and just an outstanding individual.

And Lenny Edelson knew my Uncle Bill, who my grandfather's brother, who had the first black pharmacy in Pittsburgh, good pharmaceuticals and good pharmacy, rather.

And, you know, I just, you know, my grandfather used to just tell me, no matter what's going on, if people treat you right, you have to treat them right. And I think that was always the thing. And so I've always maintained an importance of having friends of all walks of life.

And I've never taken or drawn a line in the sand saying, oh, because you're not like me, we can't connect that way. And I think that was also something that my grandfather was. He was very black, but he was very.

He was a student of the world in the sense that he understood we all had to. Had to live in this planet together.

And if we didn't, as he liked to say, famously, if we don't learn to get along, we're going to end up dying like dogs. That would be his thing, say, why can't we just go get along? And so.

But those are things that have always stuck with me, and it's probably one of the reasons why I've always worked and endeavored to connect with as many people as possible, especially people that don't look like me, because it's important to make those connections.

Well, you asked about his last years beyond abc, that some of his greatest mentorship was to young white journalists. Were fresh in the job, and they speak about him, I mean, with such affection and respect for.

For how he showed them the way, how to be a television journalist, how to handle yourself in a work situation, how to interview people. So his mentorship, I mean, we don't. You're exactly right. We don't want to look at this story as. At all focused or narrow on one thing.

It was the way he was, and he brought that into every world he was in, with every person. As long as I believe you're right, you treat people, treat you a certain way, you treat them a certain way, and you move on from there.

But it seemed like, you know, he had a broad idea of the human cause and who should be involved. And as we said about Mal throughout, nobody was too big or too small to be, you know, to be the focus of his attention.

Yeah, no, it always. It stood very clearly with me, and I'm just thankful that I got to experience him in person, live and direct, as they say.

So it's been nothing short of amazing. But the thing that I would just like to say again is thank you guys so much for putting this book together.

And for those of you that are actually listening to the podcast, I'm holding the book up and I'll. I'll put a link in the show notes so that you guys can order this book.

I'll put a link so that you can order it directly from Pittsburgh University Press, but it's also on Amazon. It's on at Barnes and Noble. It will be available, I think, by the time this episode comes out. It's going to be coming out on the 5th, 15th of June.

Is that the official date or the 20th?

Well, I think it was the 28th of June, but it is available already.

It is available. Okay, that's good. So regardless, and even if you're watching this a year from now, just go buy the book.

And trust me when I say this, if for some reason you don't like this book, I'm happy to refund the cost because I, I feel that strongly about it. I, I lived with him, so I got to benefit. I got to see it up close and personal.

But not everybody has the benefit of having, like, somebody like Mal Good in their lives to speak into their lives. And that's, to me, is one of the powers of a book. A good book can speak into your life.

And I believe, Leanne and Rob, this book that you guys wrote, Mal Good, the Life and Work of a Black Broadcast Trailblazer, will speak into the lies of those who pick it up and open it and read it. So I want to thank you guys both so, so very much for joining me today on this podcast.

This is a very special episode for me and again, for those of you that have endured and listened for the whole 50 plus minutes, if you wanted to understand why Randy is the way that he is and why I do what I do and why podcasting came along at such a perfect time, because I got to believe that. And you guys would appreciate this. If podcasting was around when my grandfather, he would have done pot.

He would have been, he would have had a podcast. It would have been without question.

But I mean, it's such a natural thing for me, and he is that through line for me and why I gravitate so much to getting behind a mic and sharing some, some really amazing stories and hopefully encouraging some people in the process.

So thank you guys so much because I believe what you have imprinted in this book will be a level of encouragement for generations to come that decide to read it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Randy.

Absolutely. Well, Leanne Sukas, Rob Ruck, I really appreciate you both and I want to again, encourage folks to get out and get the book.

Mal Good, the Life and Work of a Black Broadcast Trailblazer. It is out and it's definitely, and the title, official title, is Mal Good Reporting the Life and Work of a Black Broadcast Trailblazer.

I will definitely be getting this book into the Fayetteville Public Library.

For those of you that are wondering, I've already spoken to the Light, the executive director, who's a dear friend of mine, and of course he said, I will get the book and I will get several copies and we'll have it in the, in the library.

And I'm going to talk to Springdale, I will talk to the Rogers Public Library, and I'll talk to Bentonville to make sure that they have this book as part of their collection. So trust me when I say we're going to get it out there and make sure that the world reads it.

So I appreciate you guys so much and I hope you have a great day.

And thank you, Randy. Have a great day.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, folks, there you have it. Another episode of the I Am Northwest Arkansas Podcast.

To learn more about us or all things Northwest Arkansas, visit I am northwest arkansas.com to subscribe to the podcast. You can find us on every major podcasting platform, especially Apple podcasts.

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I'm your host, Randy Wilburn, and we'll see you back here next week for another new episode of the I Am Northwest Arkansas Podcast. Peace. We hope you enjoyed this episode of I Am Northwest Arkansas.

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