Interview with Austin Long Scott. In 1961, Austin Scott became the first African American full-time reporter hired by The Associated Press. He was based in Sacramento covering the California Legislature for three years, then in 1964 the Associated Press moved him to New York City. He covered the Harlem riots that year, and then reported on similar urban uprisings in city after city over the next five years. By late 1969, as the Associated Press' senior black reporter, he covered most of the nation's major African American urban uprisings, except for Watts. He also traveled extensively in the South, beginning in 1965, to make periodic assessments of the civil rights movement, of efforts to end hunger, and of other efforts to bring social change.
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