One of the key personal attributes of a determined investigative reporter is courage. Almost inevitably, the reporter faces threats and intimidation in the course of doing stories that expose corruption and criminality. So this is not a profession for those who would back down in the face of danger.
Nobody who knew her would ever have accused Berkeley journalist Kate Coleman of backing down in the face of danger, or anything else for that matter.
On the contrary, Kate always stood her ground. She was as brave a reporter as I ever met in my long career, including 12 years as executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Kate died Tuesday at the age of 81 from complications of dementia.
Soon after Lowell Bergman, Dan Noyes and I founded CIR in 1977, one of the first projects we commissioned was an investigation of the Black Panther Party’s reign of terror on innocent citizens unconnected to the political mission of the party or the FBI’s illegal attempts to undermine it.
We found it difficult to find reporters courageous enough to take on the assignment until Kate and her co-author Paul Avery agreed to do it.
The result was a pivotal expose of the Panthers called “The Party’s Over,” published in New Times magazine on July 10, 1978. The article detailed many crimes committed by BPP co-founder Huey Newton and his associates, and mentioned the suspicious murder of party bookkeeper Betty Van Patter, which Kate would investigate further in future articles.
In response to the death threats following publication of their New Times article, Kate and Paul and the rest of us at CIR had to close our office and go into hiding for a period of time.
Kate’s expense report for the story was unusual in that it included the purchase of a handgun for self-defense and bars for the windows on her home.
But in the face of the threats to her life, Kate didn’t stop her investigation of the Panthers. Far from it, she continued to publish critical pieces about the party and the Van Patter case in various publications, including Heterodoxy in the 1990s.
Despite or perhaps because of this work, Kate remained committed all of her life to the cause of social justice and racial equality. She once told me, “The ugliest thing about our society is racism.”
Besides her journalism, Kate was many, many other things, including a competitive swimmer and a member of the Dophin Club in San Francisco, an activist in the Free Speech Movement, a feminist who liked the company of men and a loyal friend.
She had a wicked sense of humor and every now and again, allowed people a glimpse of her softer sweet side.
Kate wrote many other articles on topics other than the Black Panthers for Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Mother Jones and other publications, as well as a book, “The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods and the End of Earth First!” in 2005.
A common feature of her work was the fearlessness with which she approached her subjects. She always had the courage to speak the truth as she found it, regardless of the consequences.
And that is how I will always remember her. That and her laugh.
Kate’s files are preserved at the Kate Coleman Archive at Stanford University.
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