DENVER – In September 1971, Sandra Dillard walked through the front doors of The Denver Post for the first time as a full-time journalist. This was a milestone moment for Dillard, who had always dreamed of a journalism career at a major newspaper. But it was also a milestone for The Denver Post, as Dillard was the publication's first Black female journalist.
“At that time, as far as I know, I was the only Black female journalist in the state,” Dillard said.
But her journalism journey began long before she started at the Denver Post.
Early journalism career
“I had my first published article when I was 9 in Sacramento,” Dillard said.
When Sandra was 12 years old, she was the first Black child to represent Colorado and Wyoming in the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C..
But Dillard said her chaperone during the trip, who was a reporter for a local Colorado newspaper, wrote an article about Dillard, skipping over key details of Dillard’s experiences while visiting the nation’s capital.
“She wrote about the fact that I had discovered 52 steps, or however many steps there were at the Washington Monument. And a journalist would have written about how the person representing two states in the international Spelling Bee was turned away from the movies, and that's what I would have written,” Dillard said.
Dillard referred to multiple incidents where establishments refused to offer her service because she was Black.
“They didn't want me to stay in the host hotel. I was the first Black person to ever stay in that hotel, and I had a room with no windows. I think it had been a broom closet,” Dillard said.
She went on to write her own article about the trip and won one of her first journalism awards for the piece.
“In college, I minored in journalism. I didn't think I'd ever be one," she said. "I was a teacher, like every other Black woman in my age group. You were a teacher, a librarian, a social worker or a nurse, and with your college education, that's the four things you could do with it. And my mother had been a teacher, and so I taught too."
While Dillard was earning her master’s degree and working for a small newspaper that covered Santa Barbara and Isla Vista, California, a press release for the Summer Program for Minority Journalists came across her desk.
“I said, ‘Oh, I'd love to do this.' And a friend of mine said, 'What are you going to do about your pension?’ And 'You've taught school all these years.' And I said, 'If I have to stay in teaching, I won't live to collect my pension. This is what I really have always wanted to do, and I'm going to at least try for it,'" she said.
Five hundred students applied and Dillard was one of few who were selected.
“The Denver Post agreed to sponsor me, and... it was not a remedial program. Keep in mind, I was already finishing up my master's,” Dillard said. “I was in the journalism program at Columbia right after the Kerner Commission Report.”
The Kerner Commission Report examined civil unrest in the United States during the 1960s and studied media coverage. The report criticized media outlets for not hiring Black journalists.
“So, we spent the summer in Columbia, and they worked us to death, and they should have, because they said, 'This is what it's going to be like,'" Dillard said.
Dillard starts working full-time at The Denver Post
After the program, Dillard went to work at The Denver Post full-time.
A photograph from that time shows Dillard with a poster board attached to her desk that read "I am not the receptionist, I am a reporter."
“They assumed I was the secretary and not a reporter like the rest of the people in the room,” Dillard said. “It was frustrating.”
Dillard said she did receive support from a coworker named George Lane, the first Black male journalist at The Denver Post.
“He had been a postman, one of the things that Black men could do with their college education, and he was my mentor when I got to the Post," she explained. "My life would have been much different and worse, if it hadn't been for George. I would go to him about everything, including things that I thought were racist and things I thought were sexist. And he would tell me what to do or what not to do.”
Becoming a Founder of the National Association of Black Journalists
Dillard would end up becoming a mentor herself to thousands of young journalists as a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists(NABJ) in 1975.
“I was there (in D.C.) for the Black Congressional Caucus that they have every year," she said. "They have about a week of workshops and speakers and I was on one of the panels, and I was told about it when I was there, and urged to come to the meeting. And I came, and I thought, this is a good thing. A whole bunch of journalists were from Philadelphia. A whole bunch were from, you know, D.C. I was the only person from Denver that was even there, and I thought it'd be nice to have other people that you can talk to or meet with. And I'm just amazed at how NABJ has grown and prospered and the kinds of things that we do.”
The latest statistics from the Pew Research Center show there are more Black journalists in the U.S. today than when Dillard started her career but still, just 6% of U.S. journalists identify as Black.
Dillard said this proves how much organizations like NABJ are still needed.
Dillard enters motherhood
After working at the Post for several years, Dillard transitioned from a general assignment reporter to a theater columnist.
She traveled the world covering stories for The Denver Post and winning prestigious journalism awards.
But Dillard, who was a divorcee raising her child on her own for many years while working at the Post, said her son Alton Dillard is her greatest accomplishment.
“He never joined a gang. He never did. He turned out just the way anybody would want their son to turn out,” Dillard said. “He's a good person, you know? He's actually good, and he also spends a lot of his free time coaching basketball for kids.”
“I like to say I was raised in the newsroom, which I literally was, and so that included watching how she went about her job in the old days, where you had to do things like pull physical paper wire, copy,” Alton Dillard said.
Dillard is currently the principal consultant of the Dillard Group LLC.
“The No. 1 thing her career has helped me with is when I deal with my clients, and I had also had a career as a U.S. Senate press secretary and also spokesman for the Denver County Elections Office for years — it really taught me the importance of true media relations,” Alton Dillard said. “She faced a lot of challenges. Some of them seemed to be, you know, racial from what I remember, and then also, because she was a woman, some of the stuff that she dealt with would have gotten people hauled over to Human Resources immediately these days.”
Alton Dillard said he is proud of all his mother’s accomplishments.
“I appreciate my mom, both for just being a great mom and for what she's done in the space of journalism,” Alton Dillard said.
Dillard had job offers from other international papers throughout her career, but she chose to stay in her beloved Denver, doing the job that changed her life and others whose lives may have otherwise been overlooked.
“I would say it's the best job you can have,” Dillard said.
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