John Quinones Making a Funny Face

Imagine a room so dark you can't see your own hand in front of your face. For John Quinones, journalists are like the one person in that room with a candle.

"They can shine it on the darkest corners of this room to illuminate injustice, to illuminate corruption, to illuminate civil rights violations, human rights violations," he said. "I think when journalism is done right, and God knows we're not doing it right too often these days, but when it is, those are the kinds of stories that we should be telling."

Quinones, who is best known as the host of ABC's hidden camera show "What Would You Do?," was the keynote speaker at Indiana University's 2017 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Leadership Breakfast on Monday morning. A record 880 people registered for the breakfast, which included opening remarks from Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton, who chided U.S. President-elect Donald Trump over a recent Trump tweet.

The president-elect criticized U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, over the weekend in a series of tweets that said Lewis was "falsely complaining about the election results" instead of fixing his own district, which Trump described as falling apart.

"All talk, talk, talk — no action or results," Trump tweeted.

The tweets followed Lewis' statement that he will not be attending Trump's inauguration this Friday because he did not accept Trump as the legitimate winner of the presidential race following concerns over possible Russian involvement in trying to affect the election.

Hamilton recounted Lewis' involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, including being beaten in Alabama in 1965 on what became known as "Bloody Sunday," when state troopers attacked unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas.

"(About) three months after that march, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act," Hamilton said. "His actions changed this country for all time and for the better."

Quinones said he never would have made it to broadcast news without the work of such civil rights activism. He recounted a personal story that began in a barrio on the west side of San Antonio.

"You know how some people say 'We were poor, but we didn't know we were poor'?" he said. "We knew we were poor."

At 6 years old, he spoke no English, despite the fact that his family had been in Texas for seven generations. With 60 percent of San Antonio's population Hispanic, everything from the church services he attended to the television shows he watched were in Spanish. Over the years, his appearance and bilingualism have led some people to ask when he crossed the border, a question he takes pleasure in answering.

"I'm like, we were always there," he said. "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us."

More often, though, when people made assumptions about Quinones based on his race, the result wasn't funny. Quinones knew he would have to go to college to fulfill his dream of becoming a journalist, but when he tried to sign up for the types of classes he would need in order to be accepted, teachers suggested he take vocational courses such as wood shop instead.

"They judged me by the color of my skin and the accent in my voice," he said.

At the insistence of his mother, he pressed on, eventually joining the staff of his school newspaper. With help from Upward Bound — a federally funded civil rights-era program that supports students from low-income families in their preparation for college — he enrolled at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. While in school, he got an internship at a country music radio station. There, Quinones practiced his English, first by critiquing recordings of his own voice, then telling listeners what new drug was "now available at Walgreens," and finally reading five-minute news updates in the wee hours of the morning.

He was accepted into Columbia University's master's program in journalism, but could only afford to go because of an NBC news fellowship. After graduation, he got a job at the CBS News affiliate in Chicago, and did a story only someone with his background could do. At the age of 25, he went undercover to show what it was like to immigrate from Mexico to the U.S.

After successfully crossing the Rio Grande, he kept up the facade in Chicago and got a job a Greek restaurant. The owner had seven undocumented Mexican employees working for him who hadn't been paid in 17 weeks. Every time they complained, the owner would remind them of the basement sleeping quarters and meals he provided them and then threatened to call immigration police. At night, Quinones interviewed the workers, who told him how they were being held as virtual slaves.

One day, Quinones came to the restaurant speaking fluent English with a camera crew behind him.

"I remember we had to chase the owner of the restaurant through the parking lot, because he didn't want to talk to me," Quinones said.

The day after the story aired, the U.S. government shut down the restaurant, arrested the owner and got the Mexican workers the money they were owed as well as temporary work visas.

"I knew then that those were the kinds of stories that, as a Latino, I was destined to tell," Quinones said.

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Source: https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2017/01/16/broadcast-journalist-john-quinones-says-he-owes-career-to-civil-rights-activism/46802417/