On March 7, 1991, Leslie Meredith Williams, a UT student from New Jersey, was struck by a car around 11:00 p.m., as she crossed Cumberland Avenue approximately 40 yards from the Seventeenth Street intersection. According to witnesses, she was standing on the yellow center-street line when struck by a car driven by Kent M. Browning of Knoxville. In its article on the accident, the Daily Beacon said she was a “20-year-old black wearing tight black pants and a black top,” and a photograph of her lying unconscious in the street ran with the article on the Daily Beacon’s front page. On the morning of Monday, March 11, approximately a hundred students conducted a silent march from the Black Cultural Center to Andy Holt Tower to express their dissatisfaction with the Daily Beacon, calling the article “racist and sexist” and delivering a formal list of grievances against the Daily Beacon. The demands of the group included a front-page apology to the students and the Knoxville community and the resignation of Beacon editor Clint Brewer. Williams died Monday night as a result of her injuries.
The UT Publications Board, to whom the grievances and demands were addressed, voted 7-2 in favor of requesting that the Beacon editor apologize for the grief of Williams family and friends that could have resulted from the paper’s coverage of the event. The board also voted unanimously to write an apology from the Student Publications Board addressing the grief that may have been caused and voted also to request the paper to run the apology as news or place the apology in an advertisement in the paper. On the possible resignation of the paper’s editor, the board decided that the matter should be addressed by the Beacon staff. The driver of the car that struck Williams was indicted on August 14 on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and reckless driving.