Marvel Jackson Cooke was a pioneering American journalist, writer, and civil rights activist. She was the first African-American woman to work at a mainstream white-owned newspaper.
Alberta Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an American civil rights activist, journalist and former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, CNN, and the Public Broadcasting Service. Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes were the first African-American students to attend the University of Georgia.
Janet Leslie Cooke is an American former journalist. She received a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for an article written for The Washington Post. The story was later discovered to have been fabricated and Cooke returned the prize, the only person to date to do so, after admitting she had fabricated stories. The prize was awarded instead to Teresa Carpenter, a nominee who had lost to Cooke.
Charles Sumner "Chuck" Stone, Jr. was an American pilot, newspaper editor, journalism professor, and author. He was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and was the first president of the National Association of Black Journalists, serving from 1975 to 1977. Passionate about racial issues and supportive of many liberal causes, he refused to follow any party line, "but called the issues as he saw them."
Linda Joyce Greenhouse is an American legal journalist who is the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has covered the United States Supreme Court for nearly three decades for The New York Times. Since 2017, she is the president of the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Senate.
Ethel Lois Payne was an American journalist, editor, and foreign correspondent. Known as the "First Lady of the Black Press," she fulfilled many roles over her career, including columnist, commentator, lecturer, and freelance writer. She combined advocacy with journalism as she reported on the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Her perspective as an African American woman informed her work, and she became known for asking questions others dared not ask.
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit educational and professional organization of African-American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C., by 44 journalists, the NABJ's stated purpose is to provide quality programs and services to and advocate on behalf of black journalists. The organization has worked for diversity and to increase the number of minorities in newsrooms across the country.
The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (MIJE) is an American non-profit organization that trains journalists to become investigative journalists, editors, newspaper managers, and media entrepreneurs. The organization seeks to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in newsrooms to diversify coverage of the news itself, creating a more complex and representative picture of the American news landscape.
Nancy Alene Hicks Maynard was an American publisher, journalist, former owner of The Oakland Tribune, and co-founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. She was the first African-American female reporter for The New York Times, and at the time of her death, The Oakland Tribune was the only metropolitan daily newspaper to have been owned by African Americans. She was a pioneering advocate for diversifying newsrooms.
Alice Allison Dunnigan was an American journalist, civil rights activist and author. Dunnigan was the first African-American female correspondent to receive White House credentials, and the first black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries. She wrote an autobiography entitled Alice A. Dunnigan: A Black Woman's Experience. She is commemorated by an official Kentucky Historical Society marker.
Nikole Sheri Hannah-Jones is an American investigative journalist, known for her coverage of civil rights in the United States. She joined The New York Times as a staff writer in April 2015, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020 for her work on The 1619 Project. Hannah-Jones is the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at the Howard University School of Communications, where she also founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy.
Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan was an American mathematician and human computer who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA, at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center.
Reynelda Muse is a former American television news anchor. In 1969 she became the first woman and first African American television news anchor in Colorado, co-anchoring a newscast at KOA-TV in Denver. In 1980 she was part of the first group of anchors on CNN. She is the winner of many awards, including an Emmy Award, and has been inducted into numerous halls of fame. The Reynelda Muse Television Journalism Scholarship, annually awarded to an African American student majoring in television journalism, was established in her honor by the Colorado Association of Black Journalists.
Theodore Roosevelt Augustus Major Poston was an American journalist and author. He was one of the first African-American journalists to work on a mainstream white-owned newspaper, the New York Post. Poston is often referred to as the "Dean of Black Journalists".
Hannah Dreier is an American journalist. She works on longform investigations at the New York Times. Previously, she was a Venezuela correspondent for the Associated Press during the first four years of Nicolás Maduro's presidency. In 2016, she was kidnapped by the Venezuelan secret police and threatened because of her work.
L. Alex Wilson was an American journalist and editor who rose to prominence during the civil rights movement. He covered the Emmett Till murder for the African-American oriented, Chicago Defender chain, while serving as the editor of the Memphis-based Tri-State Defender. In 1957, Wilson was covering the federally enforced integration of Central High School by the Little Rock Nine when a white mob assaulted him and two other Black journalists. He survived, continuing as an editor in Chicago, but died three years later with neurological damage from the violent segregationists in Little Rock.
Krissah Williams Thompson is an American journalist at The Washington Post. In 2020, Thompson was named the Managing Editor of Diversity and Inclusion, and is the first African American woman to hold the position of Managing Editor at The Washington Post.
Lorraine Elizabeth Branham was an American newspaper editor and the Dean of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She was considered one of the most important African American academics in journalism and was well known for her mentoring of young journalists.
Josephine Dorothy Butler was an American activist. She co-founded and was chairman of the D.C. Statehood Party.
Michele E. Clark was an American journalist. Clark was the first African–American woman to serve as a television correspondent for CBS News. As a correspondent at WBBM-TV, Clark covered the 1972 Democratic Party presidential primaries.
