|
So lol you haven’t lived until you publish your first long-form political journalism story (having had no training in political journalism thus far) and see it go viral. This was a story I always carried in the back of my mind that would make for a really interesting long-form piece, but I never felt like I had enough J training to make it work. But if you know me, you know I tend to pitch first and ask questions later. When the pandemic hit, I wrote up a pitch for this story, thinking I finally had time to do it justice. I had also taken a reported nonfiction class with The Porch (Fall classes are now live with one featuring yours truly!!) and felt a little more empowered to give it a whirl. I started pitching the piece right after the statue got taken down, trying to capitalize on the timely nature. I pitched. And got denied. And pitched. And got denied. Eventually, it was no longer timely. Sigh. I let it die a slow death—until I saw a tweet from an Insider editor calling for profiles of lesser-known individuals, political stories, and local movements, all of which fit the bag for this story. And better yet—the year anniversary of the statue’s removal was coming around, giving me the timely peg I needed. So I pitched—and got a bite with Business Insider. Here are the details: The Pitch: Hi E—, I saw your tweet that you are looking for profiles and encouraging freelancers to reach out and introduce ourselves. So hello! I am a freelance writer and librarian in Nashville, TN, but I lived for twelve years in the college town of Denton, Texas. A story unfolded there last summer (and the anniversary is soon approaching) that I think would be of interest to Insider.
Since 1918, a Confederate statue has stood on the town square of Denton, Texas. Last June, after decades of debate and division, the Denton County Commissioners Court voted to have the statue removed, thanks in large part to the efforts of one Black resident, Willie Hudspeth, who spent every Sunday evening for the past twenty years protesting the statue, alone.
Placed there by the Daughters of the Confederacy, the statue featured two separate but equal water fountains and an arc over the square’s entrance inviting people to walk through it as if they were walking into the past. For over twenty years, Mr. Hudspeth picketed every Sunday at 6:00 pm with his lawn chair and signs. People would honk, curse at him, call him names. In 2015, a young White man carrying an assault rifle accosted Hudspeth at the statue. He was neither arrested or charged. In 2018, Denton County leaders voted, not to remove the statue, but to place a plaque next to it denouncing slavery with a video component to explain the city’s racial progress. (This never materialized.)
But in June 2020, buoyed by the recent protests of George Floyd’s murder, the Court voted to remove the monument in its entirety, and did so in the dead of the night on June 25th. But Mr. Hudspeth was still there to see it, come hell or high water.
Denton, Texas is known as a liberal dot in the middle of a conservative North Texas. It boasts two major universities and is home to a world-class jazz school. It was the first city in Texas to ban fracking within city limits—a move that swiftly resulted in the State of Texas issuing legislation prohibiting any city to ban fracking within their own city limits. But even with the higher education institutions, the preponderance of artists and musicians that owe their livelihood to Black culture, the Confederate statue stood like an open secret to remind everyone where the loyalties lied, and served to erase Denton’s troubling history with its own Black population.
I would like to write a profile on the work of Willie Hudspeth, his success with his decades-long crusade to have the statue removed, and a quick primer on the reality of Denton’s troubling Black history. As this coming June will be a year on from the removal of this statue, I would like to go back and investigate what has happened in the city since the statue's removal, and how Denton's promises to its Black population have held up in the past year. I have already secured an interview with Mr. Hudspeth and have several sources that can speak to Denton’s Black history and the history of this statue.
I am a writer in Nashville but am a Central Texan by birth and previously lived in Denton for twelve years where I watched Willie’s never-ending fight. My stories and essays all feature aspects of Texas, most notably my piece "Save St. Marks" in The Rumpus about the tax fight to save La Grange's failing rural hospital, and “Dead Trees” published with wildness that detailed the 2011 wildfires in Bastrop. You can see more of my featured clips here: https://allthingswords.com/clips Links to all my published stories and essays are here: https://allthingswords.com/publications
Would Insider be interested in commissioning this piece? (Spoiler alert: They commissioned it.) Relationship with editor: None. This was a cold pitch. She did tell me that it was clear from my pitch that I had storytelling ability and the clips I provided proved to her that I could deliver. Response time from editor: She answered my pitch two days after I sent it. We then went back and forth on email for the next two weeks trying to firm up pay and details. Eventually, we hopped on the phone to get it sorted. Overall timeline: I pitched this piece in mid-March, had it fully accepted and contract signed in late April, did my writing and back and forth editing (many phone calls!) in May, and it published in June, just in time for the anniversary of the statue’s removal.
Total rejections received before an acceptance: Pitched it to 6 places over the course of a year before it got picked up.
Pay: $1/word at 2,584 words. You read that right. ;)
Read it here. (P.s. If you liked this pitch story, consider taking my Pitch Perfect class with The Porch in September! In person in Nashville. Sign up here.)
|
