The L.A. Sentinel : Can one of country’s major black newspapers survive 12-year legal fight and the hard realities of the day?

It began with an adulterous love affair nearly four decades ago when Leon Washington Jr., the gregarious publisher of Los Angeles’ only black newspaper, cast his eye on a young bookkeeper who worked in the office, a woman who eventually bore his son.

The bookkeeper moved north and married. Ruth Washington stepped in to help her husband run the newspaper, and became a matriarch of black society in Los Angeles. And the Los Angeles Sentinel, launched as an ad sheet when Washington had more of a mind for business than journalism, grew into one of the leading voices of the civil rights movements in the West.

But the past came tumbling back 12 years ago when Washington died, leaving a will that pledged most of his estate to his wife--but which, to nearly everyone’s surprise, also set aside a share for his sister and the illegitimate son who had proved to be his only child.

Bitter Struggle

The will touched off a bitter struggle that, after 12 years, is still winding its way through Los Angeles Superior Court, a struggle purportedly centered on stock valuation and estate accounts, but which ultimately is about Leon Washington’s legacy: the second-largest black newspaper in America, a one-time throwaway now worth upwards of $1 million.

It is a tale of pride, jealousy and love gone wrong, spelled out in the language of lawyers--and it is also a case that some family members say will determine whether the Sentinel can ever again wield the kind of influence that it did in the years when Leon Washington was alive.

The Sentinel, a hefty weekly published on East 43rd Street, first gained national recognition with its “Don’t Spend Where You Can’t Work” campaign in 1933, a boycott aimed at persuading the city’s black residents not to shop at white-owned businesses on Central Avenue until those businesses hired blacks.

In-Depth Coverage

Washington was taken off the picket lines and jailed--an event duly recorded on the front page of the Sentinel--and the newspaper went on in later years to carry the flag on the issues of job and housing discrimination, police brutality and fair political representation. It provided some of the best coverage anywhere on the 1968 Watts riots and the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

But the newspaper today is in many ways a different Sentinel, struggling against declining circulation as blacks move out of the inner city, an increasingly bitter feud between employees and management, a dwindling supply of talented writers as more black journalists move on to larger newspapers, and the hard reality that many of the causes on which Leon Washington built his newspaper have slipped out of memory.

“It’s like the old Dunbar Hotel across the street from the Sentinel,” said former managing editor Joe Nazel of the hotel built in 1921 for blacks who couldn’t get into white establishments. “Once integration hit, it died, and like all things black, once we have been able to integrate into the larger society, the black things die off.”

Front-Page Treatment

The Sentinel, with an editorial staff of 16, still offers an exhaustive mix of community, business, sports and social coverage. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign, the issue of sanctions against South Africa, police shootings in black communities, all receive front-page treatment.

The paper, which last week was named by a national association of 132 black-owned newspapers as the second-best black paper in the country (after Detroit’s Michigan Chronicle), is one of the few places blacks can turn to for steady coverage of community-oriented aid programs, fund-raisers and social events.

“It has an outstanding tradition, and it continues to offer a vehicle of expression to provide news and information that is important to the black community that is not routinely covered by the metropolitan daily newspapers,” said John Mack, president of the Urban League of Los Angeles.

Battle in Courts

Yet the estate battle now making its way through the courts, and an apparently successful union organizing drive at the Sentinel, have highlighted a dissatisfaction with the paper, a sense that Leon Washington’s Sentinel has become, of all things, timid.

Circulation has slipped from a peak of 56,000 in the 1960s to 25,000, far below the 250,000 readers that one informal market survey says it could attract.

“It is my general sense in talking to young black people in town that they don’t read the Sentinel,” said Clint Wilson, journalism professor and former director of the Media Institute for Minorities at the University of Southern California. “Even among my peers, the 40-year-old group, I just don’t find that there’s a great deal of excitement there.”

Critics complain that the Sentinel, while rightfully championing the accomplishments of black leaders in Los Angeles and acting as an advocate for aid programs benefiting the community, has failed to provide meaningful analysis of the problem of gang violence, the growing use of drugs, especially cocaine, by young blacks and the high rate of teen-age pregnancies.

Paper Criticized

“If the Sentinel was the voice of the black community, it should have approached these things long before the other papers,” complained former managing editor Nazel, who said he was never allowed to cover news the way he wanted to. “The Sentinel has not been that in touch with the community.”

Nazel quit in February after another editor approached him with “a fistful of twenties” to run a story about a prominent black doctor who Nazel didn’t think was newsworthy. The story later appeared in another section of the paper, Nazel said, and he left in a huff when he was not permitted to fire the editor involved. Nazel refused to name the editor.

The incident was not unusual, Nazel said. When he joined the paper as a reporter in 1976, he said, “they offered me my own personal lawyer whose stories I would cover and he’d pay me.” Nazel said he refused, but saw checks of $300 to $400 a week made out to other staff members from lawyers who, in those years, were not permitted to advertise.

Symbiotic Relationship

The payoffs, he said, reflect the symbiotic relationship that has developed between the paper and the black community’s social and political leaders.

Reporter Betty Pleasant said that beyond a brief mention in her column, she “never even tried” earlier this year to report the controversy that eventually resulted in the ouster of Maxine Thomas, the county’s first black woman presiding judge of the Municipal Court.

Though Pleasant knew much earlier than the big daily newspapers about the complaints of fellow judges--that Thomas was taking advantage of her post to run for a higher court--she knew a negative story about Thomas “would never fly. . . . I’d have been strung up on Central Avenue.”

Reporter Von Jones said he was criticized by newspaper management last year for a series he wrote on Police Chief Daryl F. Gates that was critical of Gates’ policies on chokeholds, and that quoted community leaders who accused the chief of being “arrogant” and “insensitive.”

Resources Lacking

Marge Sturgis, the Sentinel’s city editor who assumed most of Nazel’s duties, said that while the paper does cover news about black problems, such as drugs and gangs, it simply doesn’t have the resources to do the kind of analytical stories that she would like to do.

“We primarily go after any story we feel is relevant to the welfare of black people . . . but we’re so short staffed in the news department, it’s very difficult to do it on any large scale,” she said.

Both Sturgis and Kenneth Thomas, the paper’s chief executive officer who makes many of the day-to-day decisions, said they have occasionally had to clamp a lid on eager reporters, such as Pleasant and Jones, in the interests of being fair--and avoiding lawsuits.

“Leon Washington was a crusader, we all know that. He went to jail for what he believes in. I’m not so sure Mr. Thomas is willing to go to jail for what he might believe in,” Sturgis said.

‘Opinionated, Slanted’

Thomas said he found the articles about Gates that he criticized, for example, “opinionated, slanted, intended to foster what I see as an improper relationship between us and the Police Department. . . . I think our role as a community newspaper is to cooperate with our community systems so we can work hand in hand to solve some of the problems that exist.”

The paper did cover the vote by fellow judges to oust Maxine Thomas, he noted, adding that editors of the paper were “very much incensed” about what had happened to her.

Thomas did not dispute Nazel’s account of the attempted payoff. But he and Sturgis said that, while reporters and editors accepting money for news coverage may have been a problem in the past, the paper now has a firm policy of firing anyone found accepting such favors.

Family Members Square Off

The debate, in any case, makes it clear that the continuing court struggle is about far more than the value of the shares Leon Washington left to his heirs.

It pits Ruth Washington, who still reigns as publisher and under whose guidance the newspaper has become a veritable, if some say outdated, institution, against family members who would like to see the Sentinel sold to investors who would bring new life to the publication.

Leon Washington’s son said he has always dreamed of being a journalist, but could never get a job at his father’s newspaper. Washington’s sister, a longtime county social worker, had a son who learned the reporting trade under Leon’s stewardship, went on to work for Look Magazine and the New York Times--and who would now like to come back and make his uncle’s newspaper the crusading voice it once was.

Will Started Controversy

The drama started with the reading of the will shortly after Washington’s death in 1974, with its unexpected provision leaving 12.5% of the estate to his sister, Juanita Goodman, and 7.5% to his only son, Lynn Williams (who now goes by Lynn Washington but uses Williams in court papers).

“I will go to my grave saying that my husband did not do this will,” Ruth Washington, appointed by the court to administer the estate, announced in a deposition almost immediately.

Ruth Washington, who declined to be interviewed for this story because of what her attorney said were the “painful memories” it might evoke, produced a trust agreement showing that her husband had turned over the newspaper to her after a debilitating stroke several years earlier, and argued that the only property eligible for distribution was an estimated $7,500 in cash and insurance policies.

The Big Problem

The other heirs cried foul, and immediately moved to have her removed as estate administrator.

The big problem, they contended, was Lynn Williams--and the fact that Goodman had accepted him into the family.

“It was always a matter of Ruth would not accept me regardless, and I’m sure she’ll go to her dying bed not accepting me,” said Williams, now 37, a media center employee at Santa Monica College.

“I always had a good relationship with my father, but she would intervene,” he said in an interview. “If I called the family home and asked for my dad, I would be reminded that that’s Mr. Washington you’re asking for, and no, he cannot come to the phone.”

Goodman had always had a somewhat distant relationship with her sister-in-law. The two had argued over Washington’s medical treatment after his stroke--Goodman said Ruth Washington accused her of “meddling.” Later, Ruth Washington was irritated when Goodman defended Williams’ sharing in the will, but Goodman refused to accept any settlement that didn’t include him, Goodman said.

Exchange of Letters

“I had never even met Juanita until the death,” Williams said. “When I saw she was named in the will, I looked her up. I wrote her a letter and said, ‘Look, believe me, I can understand if you don’t want to acknowledge me.’ And she wrote back and said, ‘Lynn, I’ve known about you all your life, and you’re welcome in our family.’ ”

Leon Washington, Goodman said, “wanted a child, and Ruth didn’t want to have children. She didn’t even want him to have pets. . . . They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Goodman said one of the reasons she has carried on the fight so long is that Leon, on his deathbed, told her that he wanted her to have the Sentinel.

“Just before the end, about the second day before he died, I went to see him,” she recalled. “He hadn’t been talking very much, and I went in and he said, ‘I want you to have the paper.’ And I shook my head no; I wanted him to feel like he had to live to keep it going. But I think I kind of disappointed him, I saw his Adam’s apple go up and down, but I wanted him to have something to live for.”

Paper Part of Estate

The judge sided with Williams and Goodman in deciding that the Sentinel was, indeed, part of the estate. But he saw no reason to remove Ruth Washington as administrator, particularly when her husband had made it clear that he wanted her to be able to keep the newspaper intact by way of a clause in the will requiring that the minority shareholders’ stock be sold--with his wife having first option at buying the shares.

Williams and Goodman presented experts showing that their stock was worth at least $100,000, and even after the court established a lower value, they expected to receive at least $30,000. But by the time sale day came in 1983, the only bid Washington submitted as administrator was a $5,000 offer from prominent black attorney Crispus A. Wright. One of Goodman’s family members then offered $20,000 just to keep the bidding going, and ended up with the stock.

Posted a Loss

By this time, Ruth Washington was struggling to keep the newspaper afloat.

The year after Leon Washington’s death, the Sentinel had slipped from a net annual profit of $7,700 to a $64,300 loss, according to court documents. Washington, to keep the newspaper running, had borrowed $325,000 from Wright, secured by her house in Pasadena and property in Lake Elsinore. Now, Wright wanted his money.

When Washington couldn’t come up with it, the other heirs learned later, Wright agreed to bid $5,000 in open court for the minority stock and take over most of Washington’s stock in exchange for forgiving her debts.

According to Thomas, who for years has acted as her attorney, Washington was heartbroken. Wright was talking about keeping Washington on as publisher for only five years, and cutting her salary in half.

‘Her Life’s Work’

“Her whole existence is that L.A. Sentinel, all through the years and now. That is her life’s work,” Thomas explained. “She’d put up her own money, her own house, put everything up to keep that paper going.”

So Thomas himself stepped in. A corporation that he formed with his wife, known as KenJenCo Inc., agreed to pay off Wright, advance $185,000 to the Sentinel and give Washington a lifetime contract as publisher for $600 a week plus expenses and some real estate income.

In exchange, Washington had to transfer most of her shares in the Sentinel to KenJenCo and give Thomas her voting proxy. Though the agreement was subject to the closure of Leon Washington’s estate, Thomas had effectively taken over the newspaper.

Outrage Over Transfer

Goodman and Williams were outraged when they learned of the stock transfer. They moved to have the entire series of transactions invalidated, claiming in a separate suit that they had been defrauded, and their stake in the paper had been eroded. Moreover, they accused Thomas of duping his own client out of her property, arguing that he should have advised her to seek the advice of another attorney before transferring the newspaper over to him.

“Mrs. Washington was attempting to preserve the Los Angeles Sentinel as a black-owned community newspaper,” said Thomas of his decision to bail her out, although he said he recommended later that she get another attorney. “We’ve gotten too close. . . . I’m very keenly aware of my responsibilities as an attorney.”

The court appointed a referee to look into the matter, and Orville W. McCarroll came back with a 21-page report last month that was sharply critical of both Thomas’ role in taking over his client’s assets, and Washington’s handling of the estate.

Referee’s Recommendation

McCarroll recommended removing her as administrator, and scheduling a special hearing to examine the transfer agreement with KenJenCo and the fairness of the sale of Goodman and Williams’ stock. The referee’s recommendation, Goodman and Williams believe, will finally clear the way to put the newspaper up for sale, perhaps shortly after a hearing scheduled Sept. 10 before Judge Ronald Swearinger.

Thomas, who claimed that the referee went far beyond the issues he was asked to look at, scoffed at the idea that the newspaper could be ordered sold by the court. So does Washington’s new attorney, Leo Branton.

“That referee’s report isn’t worth the paper it’s written on,” Branton said. “How a 20% shareholder (Goodman and Williams) could feel that they can put the Sentinel in jeopardy, when she still has 80%--their claims are the wildest of claims, and really constitute only harassment.

Talking to Investors

“They were the ones who raised objections, who talked about the fact that the Sentinel was worth a lot more money than it was. . . . She put up their 20% for sale, and they had a chance to bid on it. No matter how she might feel about the illegitimate son, it has not colored her actions,” Branton said.

Still, Goodman and Williams said they are confident that the judge will appoint a new administrator, and that the new administrator will order a sale. George Goodman, Juanita’s son, was on the East Coast in recent weeks talking to potential investors.

George Goodman began his journalism career as a reporter at the Sentinel in the early 1960s, then went to work as an associate editor at Look Magazine and later as a reporter at the New York Times. And while Williams and his mother said they have no interest in running the Sentinel, George Goodman said he is ready now to come back to where he started.

‘It’s Slipped Away’

“The paper’s potential has always been there, but there are people who are just not trained to consider it from the watchdog point of view, which was how it was conceived initially--it’s slipped away from that,” Goodman said.

“Those of us who have gone through those portals of experience now, I think, look back and want to come back to doing the job which the paper’s provided an opportunity for,” he said. “My desire is to run that newspaper. It would be my highest ambition to pick up where Leon left off.”

For his part, Thomas says that the paper, every week, tries to be what Leon Washington intended.

Thomas said he and Washington are working to make sure the paper remains black-owned, fending off offers for a share in what has again become a profitable publishing operation. A $1-million offer reportedly came from the Sentinel’s major competitor, the Wave Newspaper Group, publisher of a number of Los Angeles-area weeklies.

“The Sentinel provides a very valuable service to the community,” he said. “The reasons today are just as compelling as they were during the civil rights movement--all the gains that were made are being seriously eroded by cutbacks in programs and cutbacks in funds that are available.

“There’s a lot of little guys out there on the street who don’t have any way of communicating their hopes, fears, desires,” Thomas said. “We try very diligently to serve that purpose.”