Joe Davidson was the fifth president of ABJ, serving in 1982 and 1983. He was interviewed in 2003 and 2016 by Sherry L. Howard.

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“I moved to Philadelphia in 1974 and I think that’s when I got involved. It certainly wasn’t too much after that. I’m pretty sure it was basically as soon as I got here. I was not at the founding meeting of ABJ.

I was working at the Bulletin. Jerry Mondesire told me about it. I knew him from the Washington Journalism Center. We were both fellows there. Sometime after that I ended up going to Philadelphia to work for the Bulletin. At the time Jerry was the only person I knew in Philadelphia. He was very helpful. He met me at the airport.

He told me about this new (group) they had just recently gotten started. Back then we didn’t call it the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. We called it the Association of Black Journalists. There was no national to distinguish it from.

Early members: Elmer Smith, Jerry, Chuck (Stone), Acel (Moore), Francine (Cheeks), Reggie (Bryant).

Other women? Laura (Murray) worked at Bulletin, not sure if she was involved, Edie Huggins.

I was (president) after Mumia Abu-Jamal. When he was arrested, I was president-elect and we had already had our election. He was still in office for another month or so. When he got arrested, I essentially took over.

It was a pretty tumultuous time, as you might expect. There were folks who really didn’t want to be associated with the association because its president had just been busted for (alleged killing a police officer in 1981). That’s not exactly the greatest promotional thing for an organization. And there were some people who felt they couldn’t be involved for journalistic reasons because they might have to cover the trial or just didn’t want to be associated with that organization at that point.

So it was a pretty rough time because we were not hesitant in calling for a free and fair trial, and saying he was innocent until proven guilty. I think we helped raise some money for his defense. The fact of the matter is we never proclaimed his innocence, but we did support him. We supported people giving him due process. Much of my time was involved in that whole situation.

We organized two sessions where we helped the community write press releases, how to access the media, had workshops for students at Temple, had a number of outreach programs.

(In 1977), we had a big banquet at a hotel on City Line Avenue, with Teddy Pendergrass after he left Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. It was a pretty active chapter, we had chapter meetings, speakers. Early on we would meet at Broad & Girard at the Baptist ministry building. It’s not there anymore.

Then we moved to have meetings at Progress Plaza. Good meetings with good attendance and good speakers.

(Davidson was on the first board of NABJ as regional director. He held several regional conferences apart from ABJ.)

Why did he join ABJ? It was clear that Black folks were underrepresented in white news organizations. It was also clear to me that these news organizations needed to do a better job of covering the Black community. My general orientation is toward the need for Black people to organize for political, economic and social power, and that’s kind of been my orientation for awhile – from college on.

It was the natural flow of things for me to then join an organization of Black journalists. There was no kind of great decision-making process. It was an organization of Black journalists. Seemed like it made sense for me to join. I definitely believed in the kinds of things the organization needed to do in terms of better representation and better coverage.”

How did Bulletin react to his joining ABJ? He didn’t get any pushback but heard of others who did.