Karl Fleming | Newsweek reporter, 84

Karl Fleming, 84, a former Newsweek reporter who dodged bullets and choked on tear gas while covering some of the most momentous events of the civil rights era, died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles.

The cause was respiratory illness, his son Charles said.

Mr. Fleming was in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on June 11, 1963, when Gov. George C. Wallace fulfilled his pledge to "stand in the schoolhouse door" and then stepped aside when handed a presidential order to allow two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama. Days later, Mr. Fleming was in Jackson, Miss., reporting on the murder of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

He covered the Freedom Summer of 1964, when college students from around the country went to Mississippi to join in a voter-registration drive. And after three of those volunteers - Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman - were jailed, released and, weeks later, found shot to death, Mr. Fleming was one of the first two reporters to arrive in Philadelphia, Miss.

Mr. Fleming was born in Newport News, Va., on Aug. 30, 1927. His father died when he was a baby. His mother remarried and had a daughter. When he was 6, his stepfather died. After his mother got tuberculosis, he and his half-sister were placed in an orphanage.

He attended college for two years before joining the Navy in 1945. After military service, he worked at local newspapers before becoming a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution. Newsweek hired him in 1961.

Mr. Fleming's first marriage, to Sandra Sisk, ended in divorce. She died in 2007. Besides his son Charles, he is survived by his wife, Anne Taylor Fleming; three other sons; his half-sister; and eight grandchildren. - N.Y. Times News Service