By Will Wright

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The first black reporter for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Mervin Aubespin, talked about his experiences as a black man in Louisville and the South at the 37th annual Joe Creason Lecture in Worsham Theatre on Tuesday.

Aubespin became a reporter for The Courier-Journal after covering the 1968 race riots in western Louisville.

After sending his white colleague back to the newsroom for fear that he may be injured, Aubespin spent 48 hours among flipped and burning cop cars, looted stores and the smell of burnt rubber covering the violence.

The chaos that ensued launched Aubespin’s journalism career, which led to the representation of Louisville’s black community in the newspaper.

“I needed to be at that newspaper,” Aubespin said. “So they could serve the whole community, not just a segment of the community.”

The road that led Aubespin to journalism was not an easy one, though. He spent much of his younger life working as a civil rights advocate in Louisville and Alabama with Martin Luther King Jr.

Aubespin went to Montgomery, Ala. with two friends after getting a call from King asking him to help with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 13-month protest that ended with a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.

As Aubespin and his friends were leaving Alabama, they were chased.

“Waving their pistols in the wind were a group that didn’t see eye to eye with us,” he said. “As we saw the Tennessee state line … it was like walking into the Garden of Eden. We were so happy to get out of there.”

When they returned to Louisville, Aubespin got a job a The Courier-Journal as a news artist.

In 1987, after working as a reporter for many years, he was promoted to associate editor.

Earlier Monday, before Aubespin gave his speech, seven people were inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame:

Hunter S. Thompson, creator of Gonzo journalism, Elizabeth Hansen, professor at Eastern Kentucky University, Mark Hebert, WHAS television journalist, David E. McBride, Ohio County Times News editor, Lee Mueller, Lexington Herald-Leader reporter, Mike Philipps, Kentucky Post and Cincinnati Post editor and Wes Strader, the play-by-play voice for Western Kentucky University’s football and men’s basketball teams.

“I’m so grateful Hunter is being inducted and I think Hunter would be so proud,” said Anita Thompson, Hunter Thompson’s widow. “The fact is, Louisville produced one of America’s great writers, and Louisville should be proud.”

As the various journalists accepted the awards, they each told stories of their career and thanked the people who helped create those stories.

“This great honor … is something I never thought would happen,” McBride said. “I think today … I am one of the luckiest men on the face of the earth.”