William Worthy, a Reporter Drawn to Forbidden Datelines, Dies at 92
Source: New York Times
William Worthy, a Reporter Drawn to Forbidden Datelines, Dies at 92
By MARGALIT FOX
May 17, 2014
William Worthy, a foreign correspondent who in the thick of the Cold War ventured where the United States did not want him to go — including the Soviet Union, China, Cuba — and became the subject of both a landmark federal case concerning travel rights and a ballad by the protest singer Phil Ochs, died on May 4 in Brewster, Mass. He was 92.
His death, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, was announced on the website of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Mr. Worthy was a Nieman Foundation fellow in the 1956-57 academic year.
A correspondent for The Afro-American of Baltimore, a weekly newspaper, from 1953 to 1980, Mr. Worthy also contributed freelance reports to CBS News, The New York Post and other publications. He became an international cause célèbre in the early 1960s when, returning from Cuba, he was found guilty of violating United States immigration law.
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Mr. Ochs wrote “The Ballad of William Worthy,” which includes these lines:
William Worthy isn’t worthy to enter our door.
Went down to Cuba, he’s not American anymore.
But somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say,
You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/william-worthy-a-reporter-drawn-to-forbidden-datelines-dies-at-92.html
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