Jordan Schuman
 Multimedia Journalist
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Sitting at the Table 

7/18/2015

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One of my favorite quotes that relates to what I do comes from an author named Andrew Boyd. It reads, "You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the table with its worst horrors."

On July 18th, 2015 at the South Carolina State House, I sat down at the table with its worst horrors. 

I was covering a Ku Klux Klan rally in Columbia, held about a week after the highly-debated Confederate flag was lowered from State House grounds. The flag was the topic of a national conversation for weeks after nine people were killed at a bible study in an AME church in Charleston, and the accused shooter was seen in photographs using the Confederate flag as a symbol of white supremacy. 

I'd covered
two rallies before this one, but they didn't feel like this. There were thousands of people at this one. There were passionate, angry, emotionally charged people with opinions they were sharing loudly at this one. There were probably a hundred law enforcement agents at this one. There was a lot of media at this one. The Black Panther Party and the KKK were at this one. This one wasn't just about a flag. 

I know my job is cool in that it gives me a front row seat to history. Every day, I learn something new about someone new, about the world we all share and live in together. That world is always changing, and we get to know so much about that as reporters. Even better, we get to share it with you. It is such a full way to experience life. But just like the quote says, your eyes are opened to ALL that humanity is and can be, not just the parts that are easy to love. 

The media was placed in a barricaded section between the steps the KKK stood on and the barricades that kept the crowds of protestors away. We watched people tear apart flags, shout hateful, vicious, foul things at one another. Fights broke out in the crowds among people who don't even know each other, but know they aren't alike, and know that they are angry. 

You don't want to believe you are part of any sort of humanity with the capacity for such vileness and detestation. But if you're me at this rally, you have a deadline to meet. 


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Day 3: The Kindness of Strangers 

1/17/2014

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Picture
As a Resident Assistant at my University, I have the obligation to be on duty 8 nights a semester. My second night on duty was last night. Being "on duty" is essentially being "on call." At 8 p.m. you pick up the duty phone and you along with one other RA are the on call people for the building. If anything comes up, you will for sure get a phone call in the middle of the night.

I got a phone call at 1:30 a.m. or so (?) which I didn't mind so much because it was a quick deal and I probably was only 45 minutes into sleeping. I also didn't mind it because my alarm was set for a whole 45 minutes later than it usually is for work.

Remember the news gathering I was telling you about on Day 2? The not-dead-actually-quite-alive news gathering?

My first task Friday morning was to complete the assembly and sending of the letters. I left home around 8:45 and went to Publix to buy more stamps, completed the assembly in the car and went to the post office on the way to work.

I wasn't sure where the drop box was for the letters and I had 147 of them. The woman who worked at the post office showed me where it was, but then was nice enough to take all 147 letters from me and take care of them herself. She called me "darling" and wished me a good day.

I appreciated all of that.

More on the kindness of strangers: the parking attendants at the garage at work are always the kindest. I'm sure their job is boring sometimes but they always ask how I'm doing and then wish me a good night. It's the exact send off from a day at work that everyone deserves. I bet they know that.

Today at work, I met Mark Potter. Mark Potter is an extremely impressive NBC correspondent (with a wonderful news reporter voice.) Mark walked up to me and said "I don't believe we've met," and gave me a handshake. Introduced himself, and said "I'm one of the reporters here." As if I didn't know.

Took a mental note to always introduce myself followed by who I am. Because who really is even Oprah to make the assumption that everyone knows?

It was the perfect touch of humility.

Mark Potter asked me a few questions about UM and explained a bunch of the ties he had to the broadcasting department there.

Mark (although I think everyone here calls him Potter) showed me the package he did in South Carolina about the new details in the case of George Stinney, Jr., the 14-year-old sentenced to death by electric chair in 1944.

Check out the story here.

This isn't a spoiler, by the way. NBC is teasing the heck out of it, rightly so. I watched the story and said out loud, "this is big."

I slowly learned a lot of the new witnesses and details in the story came out of the woodwork because of NBC's coverage of the story, and witnessed the kindness of strangers at work once again.

The attorneys have planned a retrial for Stinney, Jr. on Tuesday, and will assess the potential clearing of his name after he was killed for the accused rape of two dead white girls. To me, it was the justice that rang as 3 Scottsboro Boys were pardoned posthumously 80 years later.

That's why this is big. In the piece airing on Weekend TODAY, Stinney's cellmate says Stinney told him, "why would they want to kill me for something I didn't do?"

And because of the kindness of the strangers at NBC and the justice they are working to reconcile, the world might ask the exact same question he did.

You heard it here first,
Jordan




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