William A. Hilliard - a former editor of The Oregonian and a national pioneer who paved the way for a generation of minorities who wanted to become journalists - died Monday. He was 89.
Hilliard, who once was denied a paper route at The Oregonian because managers said whites did not want blacks delivering their paper, retired in 1994 after a 42-year career. In 1993 he had served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the first African American to hold the post.
In 1998 Hilliard was voted into the Oregon Newspaper Hall of Fame, which recognizes journalists who have made outstanding contributions to Oregon journalism.
"It was a great career," he said in a 2010 interview. "Every day was exciting. It was a heck of a job."
Hilliard prided himself on his talent, hard work and perseverance, traits that he believed allowed him to make his way from a newsroom clerk to a position where he ran the entire news and editorial departments.
And yet as was the case during his long career, Hilliard's race - not any one overriding journalistic strength or accomplishment - defined the man, his legacy and journey.
He was The Oregonian's first black reporter. When promoted through the paper's ranks, he received national attention because he was always the first black to hold a particular job. He was the first black to be city editor of a major, mainstream newspaper and later the first black to be editor of such a paper.
In the 2010 interview, Hilliard said he was always aware that he was being judged twice: Once as a journalist and again as a black man in a white world.
"The adults around me, my parents and neighbors, encouraged me to succeed," he said. "It never dawned on me that I couldn't."
In 1993 the National Association of Black Journalists gave its Presidential Award to Hilliard for his leadership as a mentor to reporters and editors. The association president praised Hilliard as a role model and as a "quiet, persistent journalist" who worked behind the scenes to integrate the mainstream media.
"This is the most outstanding award presented to me," Hilliard told the 1,500 delegates representing the nation's largest black media organization. "It's important to me because you are my family."
Throughout his career, Hilliard refused to be described as an African-American. He wasn't born in Africa, he'd say, but in Portland. He always insisted on identifying himself as black.
Hilliard's parents divorced when he was a baby, and for the first eight years of his life, he and his three sisters lived with his grandparents in Arkansas. His mother, who worked as a maid, moved west with a family and sent for her children when Hilliard was 8. By then she had remarried and the family rented a house in inner Southeast Portland.
"My stepfather was not a father figure," Hilliard said in a 1994 profile. "He was my mother's husband, that's all. He drank and he'd disappear for days at a time, or come home drunk. He had no interest in our lives."
Although other black families lived in the neighborhood, most of Hilliard's friends were white. When he ventured out of the neighborhood, however, he heard racial slurs and taunts. Blacks were allowed to eat in only a handful of Portland restaurants, and Hilliard remembers going downtown with his family and being stopped at businesses by signs that read: "Whites Only."
Hilliard found guidance from a neighbor. His name was Stephen Wright. He was a black businessman who owned the Melody Hotel, the only hotel in Portland that welcomed blacks.
"I cut Mr. Wright's grass and he took a liking to me," Hilliard recalled in the profile. "It dawned on me that there were no blacks that I could see as role models. But here was Mr. Wright, a black man who was not a waiter or a Pullman porter."
When Hilliard was 13, his mother and stepfather moved to Northeast Portland. Hilliard didn't want to go. Wright's family took him in.
"My mother may have been hurt from time to time, but I think she saw it as a good influence," Hilliard said. "Mr. Wright took me on business trips. He taught me how to drive. 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 attended Benson High School and worked on the school paper but was not named editor. He believed it was because he was black. After graduation, he was drafted by the U.S. Navy and served for a little more than a year. While in the service, Wright sent him small, comic book-sized copies of The Oregonian that the paper produced for servicemen.
Hilliard returned to Portland and studied journalism at Vanport College, which was organized to accommodate the returning servicemen. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Oregon, where a professor told him that he was wasting his time. Hilliard transferred to Pacific University, graduated, but could not find a job. He worked as a redcap at Union Station and started the Portland Challenger, a weekly paper that covered Portland's black community.
After a family friend heard that The Oregonian was looking for a copy boy to run errands, Hilliard applied for the job and was hired. He was 25. His boss was a high school student. After he was hired, white editors and reporters openly wondered whether he would bring what was then called the "Williams Avenue look" to the paper.
He ended up as a reporter in the sports department - the only full-time sports reporter who was never sent outside of the office to cover a story. His first outside assignment was to cover the Harlem Globetrotters, the black basketball team, which was putting on an exhibition at Lincoln High School.
Hilliard received his first byline and learned that never before had the paper covered the Globetrotters. When friends suggested he contact the newspaper union to complain about his assignments, the sports editor warned Hilliard to get the union off his back, or he would run him out of the paper. Hilliard never complained.
"Bill was always breaking barriers," said Judson Randall, one of Hilliard's friends and an assistant city editor when Hilliard ran the operation. "He came of age during a time when people of color were marginalized in the mainstream media. He had tenacity in seeking what he wanted. He did it in a way that was never pushy, but it was always firm."
In 1965, after covering sports, religion and general reporting assignments, Hilliard was named as an assistant city editor. Six years later, he was named as city editor. In 1982, Hilliard became executive editor of the paper. He flourished, showing himself to be a strong and decisive leader with plans on how to improve all areas of the paper.
"Bill started having weekly meetings," recalled Randall, who retired as assistant to Hilliard. "We had good, focused discussions on where the paper should go. Then bam, it was over. He really didn't get to make his mark. Events overtook the paper and him."
Four months after Hilliard was promoted, publisher Fred A. Stickel closed the Oregon Journal and merged the staff into The Oregonian. Stickel said no staff members would lose their jobs, but Hilliard had to absorb managers from the Journal and place them in key posts at The Oregonian.
"He did a good job under a very difficult situation," Stickel recalled in a 2010 interview. "What he did was not easy. He treated people fairly. He had a little bit of a temper, but that's OK. We all do."
The ensuing years turned out to be tumultuous, Hilliard recalled.
"The last 12 years of my career was mostly dealing with the staff and their personalities," he said. "I would have loved to have done more community work and become more involved as a journalist in the paper's operations, but I was more a manager of people. We had a serious morale problem."
In hindsight, Hilliard said he wished he had exerted more control over the paper instead of letting subordinates carve out feuding fiefdoms.
"I wish I had been stronger," he said. "I wish I had embarked on more of a crusade in the community."
Even so, John Harvey, the paper's news editor who retired after 43 years, said Hilliard's major accomplishment was building "the modern Oregonian."
"Don't underestimate what Bill did in putting that staff together after the merger," Harvey said. "Before the merger the paper made a lot of money, but the owners ran it as if we were in the Depression. We couldn't spend money. Overnight, the news hole grew by 80 percent. He was the editor during what I would call the paper's fat years when the paper devoted whatever resources were needed to cover a story."
But the paper did miss a national story in its own backyard.
In 1992, the paper was scooped when the Washington Post reported that 10 women had accused Sen. Bob Packwood of sexual harassment. The Oregonian came in for even more criticism when it was revealed that one its own reporters had been kissed on the lips by Packwood.
"I was in the dark about all of that," Hilliard said. "Some lower level editors in the news operation knew about it, and knew the Washington Post was out here looking into allegations. But the editors did nothing about it. They didn't pass the word on to me or the publisher."
Within the paper, Hilliard pushed to change the way minority communities were covered and described. Reporters had routinely written that police were looking for a suspect described as "a 6-foot black man." Hilliard said the description was so generic that it was useless, and only served to perpetuate stereotypes.
Hilliard also had the newspaper quit calling sports teams by what he called "offensive" nicknames: Indians and Redskins.
"Bill dedicated his life to The Oregonian and to serving our community," said Director of News Therese Bottomly, hired in 1983. "More than anyone, he worked to ensure our newsroom, and newsrooms everywhere, reflected the diversity of the communities we cover.
"His legacy endures in the young journalists he hired and mentored over his long career."
In retirement, Hilliard continued to be involved with journalism. He was one of three former newspaper editors asked to conduct an investigation after USA Today found a former star foreign correspondent made up substantial portions of at least eight stories and plagiarized numerous quotes and other material from competing publications.
The team of editors called the conduct "a sad and shameful betrayal of public trust."
Hilliard is survived by his spouse, Dian Hilliard. Survivors also include his son, Abdur-Razzaque, and daughters, Linda and Sandra, from previous marriages; sisters, Juliet and Dorothy; and two granddaughters. No funeral is planned, but the family plans a celebration of life early afternoon Feb. 25 at the Multnomah Athletic Club.
-- Tom Hallman Jr.
503-221-8224
thallman@oregonian.com