Early life Worthy was born in
Boston, Massachusetts, as the son of a wealthy
obstetrician. He graduated
Boston Latin High School and received a B.A. degree in sociology from
Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, in 1942. Worthy was a
Nieman Fellow at
Harvard University, class of 1957. During
World War II, Worthy was sentenced to one day in prison for dodging a physical examination for military service and failing to register at a
conscientious objector's camp. In 1954, he voiced early opposition to American involvement in
Vietnam after he visited Indo-China in 1953.
Right to travel controversies In 1955, Worthy spent six weeks in Moscow, interviewing
Nikita Khrushchev. In 1956, he managed to board a plane to
Apartheid South Africa, but was deported after 36 hours. He then traveled to
China (1956–57), where he interviewed
Zhou Enlai and
Cuba (1961), where he interviewed
Fidel Castro, in violation of
United States State Department travel regulations. At the time he entered China, Worthy was the first American reporter to visit and broadcast from there since the country's
communist revolution in 1949. While in China Worthy interviewed
Samuel David Hawkins, an American soldier who was captured by the Chinese during the
Korean War and defected to China in 1953. Worthy's
passport was seized upon his return to the U.S. from China and American lawyers
Leonard Boudin and
William Kunstler represented Worthy in an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking the return of his passport. Without a passport, Worthy traveled to Cuba in the early days of
Fidel Castro to report on the Cuban revolution. He was able to return to the U.S. in October 1961, showing his birth certificate and vaccination record at Miami Airport. However, in April 1962, he was summoned again to Miami, where he was tried and convicted for "returning to the United States without a valid passport." During this time, he was placed under surveillance by the FBI. Worthy was again represented by Kunstler, who successfully persuaded a federal appeals court to overturn Worthy's conviction. The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found the restrictions
unconstitutional. The court held that the government could not make it a crime under the
Constitution to return home without a passport. Years later, Kunstler wrote in his autobiography,
My Life As A Radical Lawyer, that the Worthy passport case was his "first experience arguing an issue about which I felt passionate," was the "first time I had ever invalidated a statute," and that success "confirmed my faith in the justice system." The Committee for the Freedom of William Worthy was formed in 1962 and was chaired by
A. Philip Randolph and Bishop D. Ward Nichols. In a telegram to
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Randolph,
James Farmer and
James Forman noted that "white citizens who have come home without passports have never been prosecuted."
Civil rights activist Worthy was a
civil rights activist and member of organisations such as the
Fellowship of Reconciliation, the
NAACP or the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which advocated for a more balanced coverage of Cuba in the US media. In 1947, he participated in the
Journey of Reconciliation together with other prominent civil rights leaders, in which they challenged state segregation laws on public transport. The action inspired the later
Freedom Riders.
Teaching While Worthy continued to work in the field of journalism; in the 1970s, he was appointed as head of the African American journalism program at
Boston University. However, the BU president,
John Silber, removed Worthy as head of the program after Worthy criticized the BU administration and supported BU campus workers who were attempting to
unionize. Following his BU appointment, Worthy taught journalism at
UMass Boston. William Worthy and Michael Lindsey co-taught the first class in Critical Journalism in the country at the College of Public and Community service, a branch of UMass Boston, which Noam Chomsky attended as a guest lecturer. William Worthy also taught at
Howard University in the 1980s and 1990s, where he held the Anneberg Chair. During most of the 1990s until 2005, Worthy lived in
Washington, D.C., where he served as a special assistant to the dean of the School of Communications at Howard U. and served on the board of directors of the
National Whistleblower Center. On February 22, 2008, the
Nieman Foundation honored Worthy with the prestigious
Louis M. Lyons Award.
Death and legacy Worthy died in
Brewster, Massachusetts on May 4, 2014, at the age of 92, of
Alzheimer's disease. The late psychologist
Kenneth B. Clark said of Worthy: "The Bill Worthys of our society provide the moral fuel necessary to prevent the flickering conscience of our society from going out." == Works == •
Our Disgrace in Indo-China. 1954. •
The Silent Slaughter: The Role Of The United States In The Indonesian Massacre. With Eric Norden, Andrew March, and
Mark Lane. 1967. •
The Vanguard: A photographic essay on the Black Panthers. With Ruth-Marion Baruch and Parkle Jones. 1970. •
The Rape of Our Neighborhoods: And How Communities Are Resisting Take-Overs by Colleges, Hospitals, Churches, Businesses, and Public Agencies. 1976. •
Pampered Dictators and Neglected Cities: The Philippine Connection. 1978. ==Further reading==