( CNN ) -- A line of angry protesters waving signs and wearing scows formed a ring around the front entrance of the Daily News ' headquarters . They took turns at the bullhorn accusing the paper of everything from libel to genocide . They did n't bring a list of demands ; they were n't looking to negotiate . They had one goal : to shut the paper down forever . `` We 're going to march until the walls come down , '' one shouted . Employees who would normally head out the revolving door to one of the lunch trucks along Broad street developed a taste for cafeteria food that day . Not Chuck Stone . Stone , senior editor of the newspaper they had pledged to kill , walked out the front entrance and met their scows with a broad smile . Picketers committed to the complete destruction of the Daily News returned his smile or nodded in recognition as they passed him . A few even shook his hand . I 'll never forget that scene . It was , at once , improbable yet typical of a man who was as comfortable in the salons of power as he was in the embrace of the disadvantaged . Chuck was the last man you 'd pick out of a lineup of guys suspected of aiding and abetting dangerous felons . In his horn-rimmed glasses , hand-tied , silk bowties and graying crew cut , he looked like a grown-up version of the nerds that tough guys used to beat up to burnish their reps . But fugitives who were wanted for vicious assaults and heinous crimes would call Chuck before they called their lawyers . In a town where some cops were known to administer curbside justice , surrendering to Chuck Stone was a way to keep from having their faces rearranged on the way to jail . At least 75 fugitives did just that over Stone 's 19-year career . In 1981 , he negotiated the release of six prison guards being held hostage by a band of armed inmates whose leader was doing life for killing a cop . Prisoners guards and a remarkably composed Chuck Stone emerged unscathed from the two-day ordeal . His departure in 1991 ended a 19-year run as the most influential columnist in town . Chuck 's courtly manners and air of refinement could disarm the unwary . But the Daily News knew what they were getting when they hired him in 1972 . Newsweek magazine had once dubbed him `` the angry man of the negro press . '' Philadelphia was a target-rich environment in 1972 . Frank Rizzo , a former police commissioner who had once left a formal dinner in a tuxedo to supervise the public strip search of a group of unarmed Black Panthers , had been elected mayor . Chuck began his Daily News tenure in time to see four City Council members , including the city council president get ensnared in the Abscam net . In a one-party town where an inbred Democratic machine reigned supreme , Chuck Stone was like a kid in a candy shop . He attacked police brutality , political corruption , the chronic failure of public schools and institutional injustice twice a week in the Daily News and weekly on his aptly-named TV show , `` On Target '' . He was the Daily News ' first black columnist . But he never saw color when he was looking through his gun sights . He described Wilson W. Goode , the city 's first black mayor , as a `` paternalistic ferret . '' When State Rep. Dwight Evans was the most-powerful black politician in the state capital , Stone called him `` an oleaginous eel . '' The English language was a sharp tool in his hands . He described one of his targets as a `` retromingent , '' a term for an animal who urinates backward . But he could be effusive in praise . He originated the George Fencl Award , an honor named for a cop known for the kind of firm but fair police work which Stone advocated . His death on April 6 at age 89 ended a lifetime of service . He was trained as a Tuskegee Airman in a segregated U.S. Army in WWII . He had worked overseas for an international aid organization in the '50s . In the '60s , he was a special assistant to U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell , Jr. and later authored three books . He ended his career as a professor of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , before retiring five years ago . Perhaps his most lasting legacy is as a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists . Les Payne , a Pulitizer Prize-winning columnist and NABJ co-founder once described him as the first amongst equals in founding NABJ . `` There were a lot of us in the room , '' Payne told me . `` But Chuck was the one holding the clipboard . '' Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion .
Elmer Smith remembers Chuck Stone , legendary Philadelphia journalist , who died April 6 . He was the first to report on the death of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas and he wrote a book about it called " The Last Days Of JFK : A Reporter's Story " ( which is still Stone was a Tuskegee Airman and a founder of National Association of Black Journalists .