Fleming has claimed that his experiences as a young boy in the orphanage encouraged a hatred of bullies and a support for the underdog that influenced his position on the civil rights struggle.
In 1961, having worked as a stringer for Newsweek for a number of months, he was hired by the magazine as a permanent correspondent in their Atlanta Bureau when Bill Emerson, formerly Atlanta Bureau Chief, was promoted.
During his career as a journalist, Fleming risked his life covering James Meredith's entry into the University of Mississippi and also in 1964 when he covered the deaths of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Whilst in this post, Fleming not only covered the Watts riots of 1965 but was also severely beaten during a later flare-up of tension in LA's southern black neighborhood in 1966.
[3][4] In 1972 two men used counterfeit 20-dollar bills printed with DB Cooper serial numbers to swindle $30,000 from Karl Fleming who was then working for Newsweek in exchange for an interview with a man they falsely claimed was the hijacker.