The Axeman Cometh: The Emergence of Nate Clay

By: Barnaby Dinges and Stan West"Like a wounded animal vigorously thrashing about as if to simulate life and avoid impending doom, the Cook County Democratic Party is given to lively gyrations intended to conceal its decrepitude." So wrote the Axeman in a recent column in the weekly Chicago Metro News.

The Axeman's anonymous column, "The Hot Skillet," may be the most biting and provocative journalism in Chicago's black-owned press.

While most in the black press praise African-American leaders, the Axeman sharpens his blade on them. Black political insiders have known for years that the Axeman is actually Metro News editor and reporter Nathaniel (Nate) Clay.

Clay, 47, was virtually unknown outside Chicago's black community until a year ago, when he began appearing as a regular commentator on local TV talk shows. But he has been controversial in black circles for years.

About two dozen black reporters and activists interviewed by The Chicago Reporter said a major transformation has accompanied Clay's recent emergence. Within the last year he has flipped from a solid black nationalist point of view to a more moderate, integrationist philosophy, they say.

Some observers speculate the change in Clay was spawned by his higher profile in the mainstream media, while others say he is sowing the seeds for an eventual bid for a seat in the U.S. Congress.

Robert T. Starks, a black activist and political scientist at the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University, sums up a common opinion of the reporter/editor/columnist/political consultant/globetrotter: Nate Clay is bright, ambitious, committed - and unpredictable, he said.

Many black leaders were "shocked" by Clay's support of Mel Reynolds, the Oxford-educated challenger to US Rep. Gus Savage in the Democratic primary, Starks said."We thought Nate was an activist... And he fooled us by supporting a mainstream black candidate, instead of Savage, the people's choice and the champion of many in Chicago's black movement. When Nate supported Reynolds over Savage, he alienated many in the black movement," Starks said.

Clay himself seems to revel in the attention. "I've been called the black Mike Royko and black [political consultant] Don Rose. "But I'm the black Nate Clay."

Clay inherited "Hot Skillet" column in 1981 from Charles Armstrong Sr., the founder and publisher of the Metro News. Armstrong, who died in 1985, started the paper in 1965 with a strong Republican perspective. He introduced "The Hot Skillet" column as a vehicle to hold Chicago's black leaders accountable to their constituents.

"Charlie Armstrong was a maverick who established the Metro News with a militant posture, and the Axeman's job was to be acerbic, to chop off some heads," Clay said. "The Metro News and the Axeman distinguish them by consistently violating the canons of black journalism that say you don't attack black leaders."

The Metro News' circulation of 76,000 is mainly comprised of "middle-class black intellectuals and political types," Clay claimed.

He said he has carried on Armstrong's muckraking tradition. The paper stood alone among the black media as a steady critic of former Mayor Harold Washington. And the Axeman castigated Ald. Tim Evans' (4th) third party run for mayor in 1989, contending it would split the black vote and therefore assure the defeat of former Mayor Eugene Sawyer.

The Axeman also has blasted former Cook County Circuit Court Judge R. Eugene Pincham for political posturing in his run for the presidency of the Cook County Board.

"The problem with most black politicians is they tend to play to the gallery, to tell people what they want to hear, regardless of the truth," Clay said. "And the black press in Chicago is their echo, their yes men."

But some observers wonder about Clay's transformation. While Starks said Clay has a legitimate role as an activist journalist, "I think also that there's a problem when you switch positions and you cannot explain the switch," he said. "Nate borders on that kind of advocacy, and that raises many questions about him, his column and his paper."

Southern Exposure
Clay was born in 1943 in Sikeston, Mo., at the time a town of 8,000. That same year, a black man accused of raping a white woman was tarred, feathered, hung and dragged from the back of a truck through Sikeston's black community. The Clays soon moved to Memphis, Tenn., where Nate Clay said he learned valuable lessons about politics.

"Blacks back then held no political office and were absent from positions of public authority in the South," he said. "I questioned the entire political system."

His parents divorced when Clay was young, and in 1959 his mother moved the family north after she heard that "gold was rolling down the streets of Chicago." The family settled in Garfield Park on the city's West Side.

Cutting Clay
Clay's journalism career began 16 years ago when, after earning a bachelor's in political science at Roosevelt University, he entered Columbia University's Michelle Clark Fellowship Program. The graduate program was designed to prepare minority reporters to work in the mainstream press.

It is no surprise to Clay's classmates, however, that he has spent most of his career in the black-owned press.

"If Nate Clay had been born a musical instrument, he'd be a set of clanging cymbals," said Chauncey Bailey, Clay's roommate at Columbia and now a reporter and columnist at The Detroit News. "He liked to write laser beam sentences, the kind that hit his subject right between the eyes. You don't see much of that writing in the mainstream, white-owned press."

Another Columbia classmate, Milton Coleman, is the assistant managing editor of metropolitan news for the Washington Post. He and Clay often clashed over whether reporters can be politically active and still provide fair news coverage, Coleman said. "Nate comes from the school of protesting and street organizing. The black press is a more activist press, so Nate is right at home doing what he's doing," he said.

The question of where to draw the line between advocacy and journalism is an issue that still dogs Clay. Black activist and veteran radio commentator Lu Palmer, who himself has attracted controversy, said Clay can handle the heat. "I don't think Nate straddles the fence on advocacy. He's an advocate. I applaud him for that. The Metro is the only paper I'd write a column for. It welcomes independent black thought."

Clay got his first reporting job in 1974 at the white-owned Niagara Gazette, a 22,000 circulation daily in Niagara Falls, NY. He said he was never at home in the "hick town" of Niagara Falls.

Ironically, Clay said the Gazette hired him because of protests by black activists, who attacked the paper for publishing a series about the effects of prostitution on a new local convention center. Blacks claimed the paper only focused on black prostitutes and ignored a white bordello operating right next door to the paper's office, Clay said.

Black leaders demanded that the newspaper hire a black reporter. Enter Nate Clay.

"I was the main attraction in that town for months," Clay said. "Blacks in Niagara Falls loaded into their cars and drove slowly by the newspaper's big glass windows, craning their necks to get a look at me. A year of that was enough."

Sweet Home Chicago
Clay returned to Chicago in 1975 to a reporting job at the Chicago Defender. He also started a column there.

Clay earned a reputation for "daring journalism," said Joy Darrow, the Defender's managing editor at the time. "Clay's columns and even his news stories tended to be noisier than others," she said. His writing had an underlying anger that I valued."

Readers' angry responses to some of his columns led him to despise the "knee-jerk reactions of black ideologues," Clay said.

In two 1977 columns, Clay cited two news articles about South Africa and Uganda that had appeared in the Chicago Tribune. He used the items as background in an attack on the racist government of South Africa and the cruelty of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

"The reaction I got from black nationalists was that my South Africa column was 'right on' but that I was a pawn of the white press for attacking Idi Amin," he recalled. "I couldn't understand how the white press could supposedly be telling the truth about South Africa on one page and then lying about Uganda on another page."

In 1979 Clay worked as a press assistant to the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, then the executive director of Operation PUSH.

Before joining the Metro News in 1981, Clay served briefly as an aide to then-U.S. Rep. Harold Washington (D-l).

Washington's Nemesis
Clay has prided himself on taking on Chicago institutions. During Washington's tenure as the city's first black mayor, Clay often chastised him for neglecting the black press. He was frustrated by the slow response from Washington's press office, run by press secretary Alton Miller. Clay asked disgruntled City Hall staffers to ghostwrite anti-Washington material for the Axeman column.

One of the ghostwriters was Francis Ward, an assistant to Miller. "Miller didn't serve Mayor Washington well when he told the mayor to ignore the black press," he said. Ward, now an associate professor of journalism at Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY., charged that "Miller was just impressed with big-circulation newspapers, the white papers."

Clay's attack continued even after the mayor's death in 1987, when Clay decried Miller's treatment of the black press at Washington's funeral. Clay's Dec. 29,1987 column read: "The you-know-what really hit the fan. Miller officiously declared that only photographers from the Sun-Times and the Tribune would be allowed to shoot on the main floor of Christ Universal Temple during the funeral services.

"It is obvious that Miller only considers the white press as legitimate and objects to the black press being given equal access," Clay wrote.

Miller acknowledged that he gave the downtown dailies most of his attention. With the exception of the Chicago Defender, he treated black newspapers - mostly small circulation weeklies - the same as other community newspapers, he said.

But Clay's Metro News may have gotten even less attention. Miller told the Reporter he never held the Metro News in high regard because of The Axeman. "The column is garbage. It is extremely caustic and irresponsible. Harold Washington despised journalism that knows no rules . . . The Axeman columns never made a ripple with the mayor because its readership was so small."

Political consultant Jacky Grimshaw, another close advisor to Washington, said Clay had a grudge against the mayor because he fired Clay after a disagreement in Washington's Chicago district office in 1981. Clay tells a different story: Washington disliked his Defender columns because they criticized Washington's allies. When Washington asked him to stop writing them, Clay refused and resigned. "I have the greatest respect for Harold Washington," Clay said. "But when he took the black community for granted, I let him have it."

Grimshaw said Clay's admiration for Washington was not mutual. "Clay is a journalist who wears blinders and who would rather spread his venom and animosity than provide worthwhile information," she said.

Sharpening the Axe
A stocky 5-foot-8, Clay resembles a softer version of former boxing champion Joe Frazier. Like Frazier, Clay isn't afraid to mix it up with powerful opponents.

Mel Reynolds, the recent congressional candidate, is a big fan of Clay's.

"The Axeman is infamous because he counters what many call the Marion Barry syndrome, the tendency for the black press to gloss over the faults of its leaders, and in fact, to pander to them, right or wrong," Reynolds said. "Nate is also one of the best, least known, political strategists in town."

Reynolds said Clay mapped out a media strategy to address charges from the Gus Savage camp that Reynolds had sexually assaulted a woman. Reynolds said the charges were a smear, an attempt to deflect attention from allegations that Savage harassed a female Peace Corps worker in Zaire.

In an early morning meeting in Clay's high-rise apartment on East 32nd Street, Clay instructed Reynolds to secretly take a lie detector test.

The strategy enabled Reynolds to tell the media up front he'd take the test to prove the sex charges were false, even though he already knew the results. The media would therefore be more likely to accept the test results, Clay reasoned.

Clay also discouraged Reynolds from consenting to taped TV interviews because they could be edited to make Reynolds look guilty or foolish.

"The allegations were totally false but they could have killed the campaign even before it started," Reynolds said. But thanks to Clay's plan, "the issue blew over within a week," he added.

Some have criticized Clay for his role as both a political activist and journalist. Clay claimed that his biases don't find their way into his news coverage. The black press' tradition of activism condones political ties that would be forbidden in the mainstream press.

John Callaway, the host of WTTW's "Chicago Tonight," frequently invites Clay on the show as a guest commentator. It has become acceptable for media commentators to be active in politics, he said. "I'm personally not wild about the unique dual role some commentators play, but columnists can play God," Callaway said. "If George Will, Studs Terkel and Vernon Jarrett can do it, why not Nate Clay?"

Clay is in demand as a talk show guest because he is unpredictable, Callaway said. "Nobody owns him," he said. "We need more journalists like that in this town."

Pincham Perturbed
Some readers of the Axeman, particularly his targets, said Clay violates the rules of fair play in his anonymous column.

Former Judge Pincham dismisses Clay as a self-serving sensationalist. "Nate Clay is just trying to enhance himself in the eyes of white media people," Pincham said. "It's cowardly to write things and then not sign your name to them. How can people respond? How can that be taken seriously?"

In a May 26 column, the Axeman ridiculed Pincham for calling on black voters to punish Richard Phelan, who beat Pincham in the race for the Democratic nomination for president of the Cook County Board.

"Pincham, in effect, says there is nothing specifically racist about what Phelan did; he simply accuses Phelan of using 'code words' like 'soft on crime,'" the Axeman wrote. "The fact is, most people, including most black people, saw Phelan's attack on Pincham's [judicial] record as simply politics, not racism, as is evident in the fact that not one black leader, including Pincham himself, said a word about Phelan's attack being racist until well after the campaign was over."

Clay, Pincham said, represents a constituency of one. "Nobody pays Nate Clay any attention," he said. "The African-American community never chose him for anything."

Clay said there is nothing cowardly about the Axeman's anonymity since he has accused Pincham of the same things in person - on TV. "There's something roguish and devilish about an anonymous column," Clay said. "Readers like a little mystery."

Some black activists disparage Clay because they perceive him to be a darling - and there fore a pawn - of Chicago's white establishment

Made for TV
Clay does have stature among some prominent voices in the establishment media. Clarence Page, a Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial board member, commends Clay for challenging black leaders."He violates the unwritten code in the black press that it doesn't air its dirty laundry [about blacks] in public," he said. "Clay's current role gives him a prominence that he wouldn't have if he worked in the downtown media."

Another Clay advocate in the broadcast arena is WTTW's Joel Weisman. Clay appears frequently on Weisman's "Chicago Week in Review."

"Nate is a mature, seasoned journalist who understands politics in the black community," said Weisman. "He's believable when he talks because he isn't slick. He isn't intimidated by [whiter reporters who might be more well-known. He seems to thrive on having his opinions challenged."

Contrary to the belligerent, hell-raising tone of The Axeman column, Nate Clay, the man, is even-tempered.

He keeps his cool on TV, even when he is challenged by a panel of white reporters. And when Clay appears in his eccentric wardrobe, which runs the gamut from loud plaid blazers to brightly-hued African dashikis, he cuts a colorful figure.

In the future, Clay said he is considering many options: a possible run for Congress in Chicago's first district, and expanding his consulting business.

Globetrotter
Operating on a life philosophy that says, "The more you deal, the more you gain," Clay is rarely idle.

He has been criticized for what some journalists call "junkets" - trips offered by foreign governments in the hope of getting favorable coverage.

"I've collected the names of every minister of tourism in the world," he said. "I tell them I'm a travel writer, though I usually end up writing about politics." He has gone, free of charge, "wherever I want to go - Africa, The Middle East, South America."

Despite the criticism, Clay is on a roll. When a reporter called Clay's office last week for a last minute question, he was told "Mr. Clay is unavailable - he's in Jamaica."