Luix V. Overbea, a former reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal who became one of the founding members of the National Association of Black Journalists, died Saturday from kidney failure in Boston. He was 87.
Overbea's newspaper and television career spanned more than 40 years. He worked as reporter for the Journal and its sister newspaper, The Sentinel, from 1955 to 1968.
Overbea replaced Alex Morisey as the Journal's only black reporter. In its series about race relations in Winston-Salem, the newspaper reported in March 1998 that Overbea wasn't constrained to covering just "black news."
Though he was accepted by the staff, townspeople reacted differently when Overbea started showing up at aldermen's meetings.
"Some of the white organizations were insulted, and they let me know about it," Overbea said at the time.
Karen Parker, a Journal copy editor, said yesterday that she owes her professional career to Overbea.
Parker got her start in the newspaper business in 1962 when Overbea got her to sub for him on the "The Negro Page" so he could take a two-week vacation.
"The Negro Page sounds backwards now, but it wasn't then because there was rarely any coverage of blacks except crime, so the Journal really stood out," Parker said.
Overbea was very well-known in the black community, she said, because he covered everything involving local blacks, from professional and social events to sports.
"Back in those days under segregation, there weren't many professional opportunities in the South for college-educated blacks," said Parker, who was a student at Woman's College (now UNC Greensboro) when she started at the Journal.
"The only career possibility I could envision was becoming an English teacher" until Overbea encouraged her to apply to the Journal's internship program and later urged her to go to journalism school at UNC Chapel Hill. Her transfer to UNC in 1963 also made her the first black female undergraduate at the university.
Overbea's 1964 interview with Jesse Jackson that appeared in the Journal , was one of the first interviews for the young Jackson, who was then leading lunch-counter sit-ins at N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro.
Jon Witherspoon, the Journal's former publisher, who started working at the newspaper in the early 1960s said that Overbea was an accomplished journalist who was respected by his peers.
"I can see him sitting at his desk," Witherspoon said. "He had a great sense of humor."
jhinton@wsjournal.com
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