Pioneering Black journalist George Barbour left indelible mark on Pittsburgh

Apr. 7—Not only was George Edward Barbour a pioneering Black journalist, he also was a civil rights activist, involved community member, stalwart church member and dedicated family man.

After stints at the Pittsburgh Courier and other Black newspapers, Barbour was hired in 1964 as the first Black reporter at NewsRadio KDKA in Pittsburgh.

His career took him from Greenland in 1963 to cover America's Cold War preparations to Alabama in 1965 for the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights. He reported on visits to Pittsburgh by both President John F. Kennedy and his Cold War adversary, Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

The Bridgeville resident died March 28, 2023, at 96.

"As KDKA's first Black reporter, George is an indelible part of this station's history and fabric," said Michael Spacciapolli, senior vice president and market manager of Audacy Pittsburgh, KDKA's parent company. "His powerful coverage of civil rights movements like (the) Selma and Montgomery March, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King, kept our listeners informed and connected during a pivotal moment in our country's history. He will be missed and we extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends and loved ones."

Born on June 30, 1926, into a poor but loving and supportive family, Barbour used more than just talent to succeed, according to his daughter, Jacalyn Barbour of Bridgeville. From an early age, he also exhibited drive, determination and a strong work ethic.

"Dad felt very strongly about using your God-given talents, and he was a fighter," Jacalyn Barbour said. "He would say not to prepare was to prepare to fail."

He was the fourth of 13 children born to Junius Ocieus and Evon Westmoreland Barbour of Oakdale.

"His father was a hardworking coal miner and his mother was a hardworking homemaker," said his son, Edward Barbour of Houston, Texas. "Their parents always taught them to do their best, no matter what challenges they faced."

Early start

Barbour got his first taste of the newspaper business at age 6, when he started helping at his uncle's downtown Pittsburgh newsstand.

At Oakdale High School, he was a member of the football and baseball teams, literary editor of the school paper and salutatorian of the class of 1944.

As a junior, he enlisted the U.S. Army Air Corps with the intention of becoming a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, America's first Black military pilots. Following graduation, he went on active duty.

With the war nearing its end, the number of pilots was scaling down — but there might have been some divine intervention in the foiling of Barbour's dream.

"Dad told us he found out later that his mother at the time was home praying, 'Dear Lord, don't let George Edward fly,'" Jacalyn Barbour said. "He planned on being a hero, and she wanted to make certain he came home alive.

"Later he got his private pilot license and he was very proud of that."

After being discharged from the Army with the rank of sergeant, Barbour went to work as a gandy dancer for the Pennsylvania Railroad and began studying journalism at the University of Pittsburgh in 1947. Among his classmates were the late Steeler's radio commentator Myron Cope and Doc Giffin, media liaison and assistant to legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.

Finding a color barrier to Pittsburgh journalism jobs after graduation, Barbour took a job at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. Aliquippa Works, saved money to buy a camera and pursued work as a photojournalist. In 1952, he was hired by the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper to do a series on separate but unequal schools on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Posing as 'Mr. X'

He was hired in 1953 as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier. His first association with KDKA came in 1959.

"As part of the Urban League's Equal Opportunity Days, he posed as 'Mr. X,' an out-of-town business man, to see how he would be treated in trying to buy a home and to enter other social places," Jacalyn Barbour said.

The series received praise when it ran on KDKA, but when Barbour inquired about a full-time job, he was told he didn't have the right voice for radio. The station relented several years later, and history was made when Barbour was hired to revisit the plight of Black residents in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

Covering the historic civil rights march led by the late Rev. Martin Luther King wasn't just professional for her father, it was personal, Jacalyn Barbour said.

"Not only did he report but he marched that entire 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery," she said, at one point being chased by a group of angry white men.

Of the experience, George Barbour reported, "In the 1965 civil rights war, Negroes, newsmen and Northerners are hated, and I am all three."

Reporting on racial discrimination in Pittsburgh wasn't without consequences, either.

"Things got so hot and heavy that then-Mayor (Joseph) Barr asked Dad for an audience," Jacalyn Barbour said. "Dad liked to tell the story that when he walked in the room, Mayor Barr hit him upside the shoulder and said, 'What's this you think you know about what's good for the Negro? I know what's good for the Negro.'

"Dad said nobody did that to him, so he hit Mayor Barr upside the shoulder. Just so happened that dad's good friend Paul Jones was the mayor's liaison and he was there," she said. "My mom would tell us later that that kept Dad from going to jail. Dad said he told Mayor Barr, 'I think I've got as much Irish in me as you do in you.'

"So they had a meeting of the minds."

After leaving KDKA, Barbour worked at radio stations KQV and WZUM and television station WQED. He served as an assistant director of communications for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, as a communications consultant with Bynums Marketing and Communications and as a freelance writer, photographer, historian and lecturer.

His accolades included Golden Quill Awards, the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation Lifetime Achievement Award and the Washington (Pa.) NAACP 2000 Human Rights Award. He was featured in two documentaries by Pittsburgh filmmaker Ken Love: "Newspaper of Record: The Pittsburgh Courier, 1907-1965," in 2002; and "George Barbour: Journalist," in 2021.

Values and principles

As a member of the First Baptist Church of Bridgeville, he served as trustee, deacon, choir member, van driver and Sunday school teacher. He volunteered his time and talents to community organizations and schools.

Yet, as hard as he worked, he always had time for his family.

"He always took time to read us bedtime stories," Jacalyn Barbour said. "All through our childhood, as poor as we were, he and my mother would always sacrifice to make certain that they took us on a vacation every year."

The vacations usually came with a lesson, Edward Barbour said, landing the family at places like Fort Necessity, Gettysburg and Fort Ticonderoga in New York.

"Dad was very history-minded. He could recite the Gettysburg Address," he said. "We knew about George Washington, about the American Revolution and the Civil War."

Though George Barbour was acquainted with racial inequalities both as a journalist and as a Black man, "he really believed in the values and the principles and the hopes of America," his son said.

The American flag waved from the Barbour family's porch and he marched in the local Memorial Day parade.

"He had a strong feeling of pride in America, even though the reality was coming short of the ideal," Edward Barbour said. "My father stressed that African American people have just as much right to all that it means to be an American. That struck home with me a long time ago, from the time I was young, and I've stressed that to my own son."

George Barbour's active life was curtailed by a brain hemorrhage in 2004, but he never lost his reporter's curiosity.

"When meeting someone for the first time, even after his brain hemorrhage, with a big smile on his face he would say, 'I'm an old news reporter. Tell me about yourself,'" Edward Barbour said. "He loved to hear about other peoples' experiences."

George Barbour was preceded in death in 2022 by his wife of 68 years, Gloria Jean Cross Barbour, and by his daughter, Carolyn Barbour Anderson, in 2015. In addition to his son and daughter, he is survived by five grandchildren and four siblings.

A Celebration of Life service will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday in The Bible Chapel, 300 Gallery Drive, McMurray. Interment with military honors will follow at Forest Lawn Gardens Cemetery in McMurray.

Arrangements are entrusted to Beinhauer-Fryer Funeral Home in Bridgeville. A complete obituary can be found on the funeral home website at beinhauer.com.

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .