Earl
Caldwell
Earl Caldwell was the first black reporter
to become a national correspondent for The New York Times
and the only reporter with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
when King was assassinated. Caldwell was born in Clearfield,
Penn. After graduating from the University of Buffalo, he
covered sports for the Clearfield Progress and the Lancaster,
Penn., Intelligencer Journal. Then he joined the Democrat
and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., followed by a brief tenure
at the New York Herald-Tribune. In the late 1960s, he began
writing for the New York Times as a local and national reporter.
He also covered civil rights riots across the nation in the
summer of 1967 and the 1968 Democratic Convention. Caldwell’s
refusal to provide information to J. Edgar Hoover’s
FBI about the Black Panther Party placed him in the center
of a landmark First Amendment case on reporters' right to
protect confidential sources. The Supreme Court’s 5-4
decision against him inspired many states to pass “shield
laws” that continue to protect reporters today. In the
1970s, Caldwell wrote a column for the Washington Star. From
1979 to 1994, he worked at the New York Post. He was founding
director of the Institute of Journalism Education, training
minority reporters. In 1994, he published “Black American
Witness: Reports from the Front.” In 1995, Caldwell
won the National Association of Black Journalists’ prestigious
President’s Award. He is the Scripps Howard Endowed
Professor of Journalism at Hampton University.
Hodding
Carter III
Hodding Carter III grew up with
a family newspaper tradition of challenging intolerance and
championing civil rights. His father, Hodding Carter Jr.,
was publisher and editor of the family-owned Delta Democrat-Times
in Greenville, Miss., and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 for
editorials calling for racial tolerance. Throughout the civil
rights era, the Carter family and their newspaper faced burning
crosses on their lawn, death threats and boycotts for their
stand in favor civil rights and against Jim Crow segregation.
Hodding Carter III graduated summa cum laude from Princeton
University in June 1957. He spent two years in the Marine
Corps and returned to Greenville in 1959 to follow in his
father’s footsteps at the newspaper. For nearly 18 years,
he was reporter-editorial writer, managing editor and editor
and associate publisher of the Delta Democrat-Times. In 1961,
he won the Sigma Delta Chi national award for editorial writing.
He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1965-66. Expanding his
civil rights advocacy beyond journalism and into politics,
he helped organize a bi-racial delegation to the 1968 Democratic
National Conventions to unseat the all-white segregationist
Mississippi delegation. He worked on two presidential campaigns
for Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. In January 1977, Hodding
Carter III became the spokesman for the State Department and
a familiar face to Americans watching his televised briefings
during the Iranian hostage crisis. In 1980, he launched an
award-winning career in television journalism, serving as
host, anchor, panelist, correspondent and reporter for a variety
of other public affairs television shows. He has written two
books, "The Reagan Years" and "The South Strikes
Back." He held the Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism
at the University of Maryland College of Journalism from 1995
to 1998. He has been president and CEO of the John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation since 1998. He is married to Patt
Derian, a veteran civil rights activist.
Shiu-Kai Chin Shiu-Kai
Chin is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science at Syracuse University and the Program
Director of Computer Engineering. Chin is a commissioner on
the Onondaga County/City of Syracuse Human Rights Commission.
He is also a trainer in the Alternatives to Violence Project
at Auburn Prison - a maximum-security prison in New York.
The anti-violence project is an international, non-denominational
program that teaches conflict resolution and communications
skills. He is a narrator and player in the Syracuse Mental
Health Players. The group uses improvisational role-playing
as a means to educate audiences on topics ranging from adolescent
sexuality, family and workplace communications to drug and
alcohol abuse. He is also on the boards of several organizations
including the Board of Trustees of WCNY Public Radio and Television
and Community Wide Dialogue. In 1997, he was appointed Laura
J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence
- Syracuse University's highest teaching award. Before joining
Syracuse University in 1986, Chin was a senior engineer and
program manager at General Electric.
Shaw
J. Dallal
He teaches comparative
Middle East Politics, the Arab Israeli Conflict, the Middle
East and the global political economy for the Maxwell School
at Syracuse University. An international lawyer and scholar,
he has served as the chief legal advisor for the Organization
of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) in Kuwait. He
has written numerous law publications, political science articles
pertaining to the Middle East, novels and short stories. His
most recent novel, “Scattered Like Seeds,” chronicles
the intersection of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the life
experience of a first generation immigrant. Dallal holds a
J.D. from Cornell University.
Paul
Delaney
A veteran print journalist, he spent 23
years with The New York Times as an editor and correspondent.
Delaney began his newspaper career at the Atlanta Daily World
and worked for the Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) and the Washington
Star before joining The New York Times' Washington, D.C.,
bureau where he covered urban affairs, politics and civil
rights. He served in the Chicago Bureau of the Times and as
bureau chief in Madrid, Spain, as well as an editor on the
national news desk. A graduate of Ohio State University where
he majored in journalism, Delaney is a founding member of
the National Association of Black Journalists. He has been
a member of the Overseas Press Club, Society of Silurians
and the Society of Professional Journalists, and is on the
board of National Public Radio and the selection committee
for the Media Fellows in Health Program of the Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation. He also now directs the Initiative on Racial
Mythology of the Gene Media Forum sponsored by Syracuse University.
Before that, he edited the editorial page for Our World News
(1996-1998), wrote editorials for the Baltimore Sun (1999-2000)
and chaired the journalism department at the University of
Alabama (1992-1996).
Amy
Falkner
Amy Falkner is a professor
at Syracuse University’s Newhouse school specializing
in media planning and media sales, retail advertising and
advertising strategy. Falkner is the lead researcher for the
2001 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census and ensuing online
polls with GL Census Partners and Zogby International. GL
Census Partners includes OpusComm Group, an advertising and
public relations agency; GSociety which owns several gay-
and lesbian-oriented Web sites; Falkner and former Syracuse
University researcher Beth Barnes. Before entering academe,
Falkner spent a dozen years in the newspaper industry. She
worked as a reporter before moving into the business side
of newspapers, first in retail sales and eventually as the
head of a special sections department. In 1995, she was named
one of Presstime magazine's Top 20 newspaper executives under
40. Falkner holds a bachelor’s degree from St. John
Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., and a master’s from
Syracuse University.
Karl
Fleming
While at Newsweek Magazine, Karl Fleming
reported on the major events of the civil rights movement
including: both Kennedy assassinations, the Martin Luther
King assassination, presidential campaigns, national political
conventions, the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the trials
of Jack Ruby and Charles Manson. He was also seriously injured
while covering the Watts riots. Later he was a managing editor,
producer and on-air reporter for CBS and its affiliate in
Los Angeles. Originally from Newport News, Va., where he grew
up in a church orphanage, Fleming began his career as a police
and court reporter for the Daily Times in Wilson, N.C. In
1975, he published “The First Time,” with Anne
Taylor Fleming. He now lives in Los Angeles where he is working
on a memoir.
Phyl
Garland
A graduate of Northwestern University's
Medill School of Journalism, Phyllis (Phyl) Garland began
her career in 1959 as a reporter for The Pittsburgh Courier,
a nationally distributed African-American newspaper. In
May 1963, she went to Binghamton, N.Y., to interview the
widow of William Moore, the white mailman who was shot to
death while attempting a Freedom Walk to Jackson, Miss.
The two articles she wrote were among the few to provide
insights into Moore and the effect of his death. Later that
year, she covered the March on Washington. While at the
Courier ,she also wrote a series on the history of blacks
in the labor movement and numerous stories related to housing,
education and the arts. After joining the staff of Ebony
Magazine in 1965, she went to the Deep South to research
Fannie Lou Hamer and other black women in the Civil Rights
Movement. In 1968, she traveled through Mississippi, writing
about the first blacks to elected to public office in that
state since the Reconstruction. She also wrote the May 1968
Ebony cover story on the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., following his assassination. Currently, she is
a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of
Journalism, where she has taught for thirty years while
continuing to write. She is a specialist in the field of
black music.
Dorothy
Butler Gilliam
She was a journalist with The Washington
Post from October, 1961, until the mid-1960s, then again from
1972 until her retirement in 2003. During her time there,
she wrote a regular column on education, politics and race,
as well as her own personal experiences. She also edited the
Style section and headed up the Young Journalist Development
Program, an initiative to cultivate talented young people
interested in journalism and create opportunities for minorities
– who are often under-represented in newsrooms across
the country. Born in Memphis, Tenn., Gilliam holds a bachelor's
degree from Lincoln University in Lincoln, Mo., and a master's
from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Among
her many accolades are her induction into the Society of Professional
Journalists' Hall of Fame; the University of Missouri Honor
Medal in Journalism (1998); and the Ann O'Hare McCormick Award
from the New York Newspaper Women's Club. Gilliam joined the
School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington
University as the Shapiro Fellow in September 2003. As a cub
society reporter for the Tri-State Defender in Memphis, Tenn.,
in 1957, she defied her editor’s orders to stay in the
newsroom and headed for Little Rock, Ark., to see –
and maybe cover – the landmark intergration of Central
High School. She found photographer Ernest Withers, made a
truce with her angry editor, and covered some of the Little
Rock story. Her enthusiasm and initiative impressed editors
at Jet magazine, the leading black magazine across the country,
and she quickly became an editor for Jet.
John
Herbers
He began his journalism career in 1949 in
Mississippi. He spent 12 years at the Greenwood Morning Star,
the Jackson Daily News and United Press International. During
that time, he covered the origins of the Civil Rights movement;
the effects of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education
decision that public school segregation was unconstitutional;
the trial and acquittal of two white men for the murder of
Emmett Till – a 14-year-old black boy accused of whistling
at a white woman; and other aspects of the racial struggle
that consumed the attention of both races throughout the state.
In 1963, he joined The New York Times Atlanta bureau. From
there he covered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s movements in
Birmingham and Selma, Ala., and St. Augustine, Fla.; and the
Klu Klux Klan's attacks on civil rights workers and church
burnings during the summer of 1964. In 1965, Herbers moved
to Washington, D.C., where he covered civil rights legislation,
Congress and the White House. He also worked as the Times
assistant national editor, Washington bureau news editor and
roving national correspondent.
Vernon Jarrett
Vernon Jarrett began covering civil rights
in the North during the 1940s for the Chicago Defender, one
of the nation’s most powerful black newspapers. His
career has spanned print, broadcasting and the classroom.
In 1970, he became the first black syndicated columnist for
the Chicago Tribune. During his 26-year tenure at the Tribune
and Chicago Sun Times, Jarrett wrote more than 3,900 commentaries
that helped shape the national discussion on race relations.
Jarrett then moved to WLS-ABC TV where he produced nearly
1,600 television shows and commentaries. Additionally, Jarrett
has served as an on-camera source for the PBS documentaries
“Soldiers without Swords — A History of the Black
Press in the 20th Century” and “The Promised Land.”
Jarrett is a senior fellow at the Great Cities Institute of
the University of Illinois at Chicago; a featured columnist
for the Chicago Defender; a founder of the National Association
of Black Journalists in 1975 and in 2004 the president-elect
of its Chicago chapter.
Ray
Jenkins
A Georgia native and University of Georgia
graduate, Ray Jenkins began his career in journalism in 1951
as a reporter for The Columbus (Ga.) Ledger. In 1954, he was
one of two reporters who covered the Phenix City, Ala., upheaval
– coverage which won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Public
Service for The Ledger. Between 1959 and 1979, he served as
city editor, managing editor, executive editor and vice-president
of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser-Journal. During his tenure,
he covered the rise of Martin Luther King, the governorship
of George Wallace and the decisions of federal Judge Frank
Johnson, which, in time, would become the foundations of expanded
civil rights for blacks in the South. During the 1960s and
'70s, Jenkins continued his civil rights reporting at The
Christian Science Monitor and then The New York Times. His
articles on Wallace defined the segregationist governor to
the nation. His series on Johnson earned him the 1970 Gavel
Award of the American Bar Association. From 1979-1981, he
was special assistant for press affairs to President Jimmy
Carter. After 10 years as the editorial page editor of The
Evening Sun in Baltimore, he retired from daily journalism
in 1992. A member of the Alabama bar, Jenkins was a Nieman
Fellow at Harvard Law School in 1964-65, and graduated from
the Jones Law Institute in Montgomery, Ala. In 1989, he lectured
at journalism programs at Fudan University in Shanghai, China,
and the University of Beijing. In 1985, he was awarded the
Ernie Pyle Award for human interest reporting. He has written
extensively on Southern politics and culture for The New York
Times and other publications, and is the author of “Blind
Vengeance,” a book about the assassination of a federal
judge in Alabama in 1989.
Haynes
Johnson
The son of the late
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor Malcom Johnson,
Haynes Johnson has distinguished himself as a newspaperman
and a political reporter in his own right. Johnson won the
1966 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for his coverage
of the civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Ala. He is a
40-year veteran newsman in the nation's capital, first for
the Washington Star and still for the Washington Post. He
is the Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the Philip
Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland. Johnson
is considered "one of the most perceptive, the best-informed,
and the most level-headed reporters in Washington," according
to former London Times editor Godfrey Hodgson in the Washington
Post Book World. Thousands of television viewers know him
for his reports on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) program
"Washington Week in Review" and "NewsHour with
Jim Lehrer." Johnson's books on affairs of national interest
include: "The Bay of Pigs: The Leaders' Story of Brigade
2056," "In the Absence of Power: Governing America,"
"Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan
Years," "The System: The American Way of Politics
at the Breaking Point," and "The Best of Times:
America in the Clinton Years." Johnson earned his bachelor's
in journalism at the University of Missouri and holds a master's
from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Herbert
Kaplow
Herbert Kaplow, now a Washington correspondent
for ABC News, has been a broadcast journalist since his graduation
in 1951 from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern
University. He spent many years with NBC News reporting on
the civil rights movement – from the Supreme Court’s
ruling in the Brown case in 1954 to school desegregation dating
back to the Little Rock confrontation in 1957, and including
integration crises in other cities. Kaplow has covered almost
every political convention for the last quarter of a century.
In 1958, he traveled with then-Vice President Richard Nixon
on his Latin American tour. During the 1960s, Kaplow covered
Nixon again – this time on the campaign trail for California
governor's seat, then for president. Kaplow has won numerous
awards including a 1983 Unity Award for his involvement in
the ABC Radio reports, "The Kennedy Years;" a 1983
Headliner and Unity Award for "The Dream Revisited,"
an ABC Radio News special report marking the 20th anniversary
of the March on Washington; and an Emmy for the ABC series
"Directions." A New York City native, he now lives
in Falls Church, Va., with his wife Betty. They have three
sons.
John
Lewis
While still his 20s, John Lewis had already
become one of the most effective leaders ofin the civil rights
movement. The son of sharecropper, Lewis was born in Alabama,
where he attended segregated public schools. After organizing
sit-in demonstration in Nashville, Lewis volunteered for the
1961 Freedom Rides, which sought to challenge segregation
at interstate bus terminals across the South. As a result
of participating in these rides, Lewis was severely beaten
by angry mobs. From 1963-66, Lewis was the Chairman of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and became
a recognized as one of the “Big Six” leaders in
the civil rights movement. In 1963, he was a keynote speaker
at the historic “March on Washington.” In what
would become a turning point for the civil rights movement,
Lewis – then only 25 years old – and fellow activist
Hosea Williams began a 54-mile march from Selma, Ala., to
the capitol of Montgomery leading more than 500 demonstrators
seeking the right to vote. At the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Lewis
and the others faced Alabama State Troopers who tried to disperse
the marchers with clubs, tear gas and horses. The day –
March 7, 1965 – became known as “Bloody Sunday”
and the press coverage of the violence so shocked the nation
that Congress responded with the 1965 Voting Rights Act guaranteeing
the right to vote to every American at the age of 21. The
photos of Lewis, confronting the State Troopers and falling
under their clubs, became one of the civil rights movement’s
most powerful, symbolic images. In 1982, Lewis, a Democrat,
began his political career on the Atlanta City Council He
was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986.
His congressional district encompasses the city of Atlanta,
and parts of Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton and Cobb counties. On
many anniversaries of “Bloody Sunday,” Lewis and
other civil rights supporters – including then-President
Bill Clinton on one occasion – repeat the historic walk
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in commemoration of the Selma
voting rights marches.
Charles
Moore
Charles Moore began taking pictures at age
14 in his hometown of Tuscumbia, Ala., the birthplace of Helen
Keller. After high school and three years service in the Marines,
Moore completed his formal photography training at the Brooks
Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif. In April
1989, Moore received the first Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for
Impact in Photojournalism for his world-famous photographs
of the civil rights struggle taken from 1958-1965. His era-defining
pictures of police dogs attacking demonstrators in Birmingham,
Ala., in 1963 were used by Andy Warhol for his "Red Race
Riots" silk screens. Moore also covered the 1962 riots
at the University of Mississippi over the admission of the
first black student, James Meredith. He also covered the Dominican
Republic civil war, violence in Venezuela and Haiti, and the
air war in Vietnam for LIFE, The Saturday Evening Post and
Fortune. Moore's book of civil rights photography, "Powerful
Days," was republished by the University of Alabama Press
in 2002.
Jack
Nelson
A former bureau chief of the Los Angeles
Times, he has been a journalist for more than 50 years. He
covered the past six presidents and every presidential campaign
from 1968-1996. Since retiring in December 2001, he has taught
as a visiting professor of the University of Southern California's
School of Journalism. In 2002, he was Shorenstein Fellow at
Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government where he
wrote a research paper on government secrecy. And this year,
he directed 20 Northwestern graduate journalism students in
writing a series of 17 articles for the Medill News Service
on gambling in the United States. Nelson began his career
at 18 as a reporter with the Biloxi Daily Herald where his
articles on illegal gambling sparked a U.S. Senate committee
investigation. Later, he served 12 years at The Atlanta Constitution
where his investigative reporting exposed state and local
corruption – and earned him several awards. He won a
1960 Pulitzer Prize for exposing conditions at Milledgeville
State Hospital, then the world's largest mental institution.
From 1965-1970, as the Los Angeles Times' Atlanta bureau chief,
he covered the civil rights movement which led to two books:
"Terror in the Night: The Klan's Campaign Against the
Jews," and "The Orangeburg Massacre," with
co-author Jack Bass. Nelson served in The New York Times Washington
bureau from 1970-2001. He was presented the Drew Pearson Award
for Investigative Journalism, the Robert F. Kennedy Award
for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism and was named a Fellow
by the National Society of Journalists.
Moses
Newson
As a journalist for the Tri-State Defender in Memphis and the
Baltimore Afro-American newspapers, Moses Newson covered almost every
major event of the civil rights era. His stories included the 1955 Emmett
Till murder trial in Mississippi; school desegregations in
Hoxie, Ark. (1955), Clinton, Tenn. (1956) and at Central High
School in Little Rock, Ark. (1957); and the desegregation
of the University of Mississippi in 1962. Newson was one of
only two reporters aboard the CORE Freedom Ride bus that was
fire bombed in Anniston, Ala., on Mother’s Day, May
14, 1961. He has reported from four United States political
conventions. He also covered news in Nigeria, South Africa,
Panama, Cuba and Jamaica, as well as the Bahamas independence.
Newson holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Lincoln
University School of Journalism in Jefferson City, Mo. He
also attended Storer College in Harpers Ferry, W. Va. Newson
co-authored "Fighting for Fairness: The Life Story of
Hall of Fame Sportswriter Sam Lacy." Originally from
Fruitland Park, Fla., Newson now lives in Baltimore, Md. with
his wife, Lucille. They have four children.
Gene
Patterson
He won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorials
advocating civil rights while he was editor of The Atlanta
Constitution in the 1960s. He went on to become managing editor
of The Washington Post, then chairman and CEO of Florida's
largest daily newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, until he
retired in 1988. His book, "The Changing South of Gene
Patterson," published in 2002 by the University Press
of Florida, is based on a hundred or so of the 3,200 columns
he wrote seven days a week for eight years at The Atlanta
Constitution, telling the history as it happened. He was considered
by many to be a strong voice of conscience, calling on Southern
whites to abandon Jim Crow and embrace civil rights for black
Americans. “He could not be bullied or bought and he
wrote like an angel,” as fellow journalist Harold Martin
said of Patterson in a book, “Ralph McGill, Reporter,”
about another legendary Atlanta Constitution editor.
Rob
Porter
Formerly the attorney general of the Seneca
Nation of Indians, he is now a law professor and Dean’s
Research Scholar of Indigenous Nations Law at Syracuse University.
Porter founded the Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and
Citizenship. He also established the Tribal Law and Government
Center to prepare a new generation of advocates for careers
representing indigenous nations' legal interests. Porter serves
as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Sac &
Fox Nation of Missouri and is a consulting expert or counsel
to several Indian nations and organizations. Porter holds
a B.A. from Syracuse University and a J.D. from Harvard Law
School.
Pedro
Ramirez
Pedro Ramirez has reported for The Post-Standard
in Syracuse, N.Y. , for the past five years, covering local
government, education, public safety and military affairs.
Ramirez earned his master’s in journalism from Syracuse
University’s Newhouse School, while concurrently interning
at The Syracuse Newspapers. During his time at Newhouse, Ramirez
was awarded the 1996 Newhouse Foundation Graduate Newspaper
Fellowship for Minorities. After graduation, he became a night
cops, public safety and general assignment reporter at the
Oregonian in Portland, Ore. Ramirez returned to Syracuse in
1999. In 2001, he began teaching newspaper journalism at the
Newhouse School as an adjunct professor. Before his journalism
career, Ramirez served as a communications specialist in the
U.S. Army Reserve, participating in patrols along the U.S.
-- Mexico border and seizing illegal drugs smuggled into the
country. Ramirez holds a B.A. in English from Concordia University
in Austin, Texas.
Gene
Roberts
Gene Roberts has a legendary journalism career
spanning 50 years and including at The Detroit Free Press,
The News & Observer and The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. He
served as the Southern bureau chief for The New York Times
in charge of its civil rights coverage from 1965 to 1967.
He also reported from Norfolk, Va., when the state was closing
public schools to avoid integration after the Brown decision,
the spread of the sit-in movement across the South and the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s marches in Durham, N.C.
After leaving the Times, he became one of the nation’s
most respected editors at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which
won 17 Pulitzers under his leadership. He currently teaches
a course on the press and the civil rights movement at the
University of Maryland, and is writing a book on the era.
He holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina and
was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He currently sits
as a member of the Harvard University Nieman Fellowship selection
committee. He serves on the Board of Governors for Columbia
University Seminars on News Media and Society and chairs the
Pulitzer Prize Board for awards in arts, letters and journalism.
In 1993, he won the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate
Awards for distinguished contributions to journalism.
John
Seigenthaler
A former president of the American Society
of Newspaper Editors, he served for 43 years as an award-winning
journalist for The Tennessean, Nashville's morning newspaper.
At his retirement he was editor, publisher and CEO. In 1982,
Seigenthaler became founding editorial director of USA TODAY
and served in that position for a decade, retiring from both
the Nashville and national newspapers in 1991. Seigenthaler
left journalism briefly in the early 1960s to serve in the
U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
His civil rights work led to his service as chief negotiator
with the governor of Alabama during the Freedom Rides. During
that crisis, while attempting to aid Freedom Riders in Montgomery,
Ala., he was attacked by a mob of Klansmen. Seigenthaler now
hosts a weekly book-review program, "A Word On Words."
He is also a senior advisory trustee of the Freedom Forum.
He chairs the annual "Profile in Courage Award"
selection committee of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation
and co-chairs the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for the RFK
Memorial. Seigenthaler served on the 18-member National Commission
on Federal Election Reform organized in 2001 by former Presidents
Carter and Ford. He is a member of the Constitution Project
on Liberty and Security, created after the Sept. 11 tragedies
in New York and Washington. In 1991, Seigenthaler founded
the First Amendment Center with the mission of creating national
discussion, dialogue and debate about First Amendment rights
and values.
Claude
Sitton
He covered civil rights in the South for The New York Times
from 1958 - 1964. As the Times Southern correspondent, he
covered public school desegregation, the Sit-In Movement,
the Freedom Rides and voter registration drives throughout
the region. He also reported the desegregation of public universities
in South Carolina and Alabama; the Ole Miss riot; the assassination
of Medgar Evers; demonstrations to open public accommodations
in Albany, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala.; and the 1964 Mississippi
Freedom Summer. From 1968 until his retirement in 1990, Sitton
was editor of The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C., and
vice president and editorial director of The News and Observer
Publishing Co. After retiring, he served as a senor lecturer
at Emory University (1991 – 1994); board member of the
Georgia First Amendment Foundation (1994 – 1997); and
a board member of the Counselors of Oxford College of Emory
University (1993 – 2001). Born in Atlanta, Ga., in 1925,
Sitton grew up on a farm. He holds a degree from Emory University.
He received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and the
1991 George Polk Career Award. Sitton now lives in Oxford,
Ga., with his wife, Eva. They have four children.
Walt
Swanson
Walt Swanston is the Director of Diversity Management for
National Public
Radio (NPR) in Washington, DC. Her job is to shape diversity
strategies in staff
development and programming for the national nonprofit radio
service.
Swanston has had more than two decades in print and broadcast
journalism and more than 16 years in diversity-focused work
with the media. She came to NPR from the Radio and Television
News Directors Foundation (RTNDF), where she directed the
organization's diversity, educational and international programs
for three years. Before coming to the RTNDF, Swanston served
as the executive director of UNITY: Journalists of Color,
and spearheaded the UNITY '94 and UNITY '99 conventions. She
also has served as executive director of the National Association
of Black Journalists (NABJ), directed diversity programs at
the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and consulted
for Knight-Ridder Inc. and other media companies.Swanston's
journalism career included posts as executive editor at WUSA-TV
in Washington, D.C.; and reporter/producer for WETA-TV, the
PBS station in Washington, D.C, during which she reported
on Congress and the 1976 presidential campaign. She has written
on assignment for The National Journal, National Observer,
Washingtonian Magazine and The Washington Post. Early in her
career she reported for The Washington Star, and San Francisco
Examiner. She began covering the civil rights movement as
a reporter for the San Francisco Sun-Reporter, a Black weekly
newspaper in San Francisco and later for WETA-TV in Washington.
Richard
Valeriani
During his 31-plus years as a correspondent
for NBC News and The Associated Press, Valeriani reported
stories from almost 90 countries and all 50 states. During
the mid-1960s, Valeriani reported the civil rights revolution
in the American South, including historic events in Birmingham
and Selma, Ala. He was hospitalized in Marion, Ala., after
being clubbed by a white segregationist during a demonstration.
As a reporter, Valeriani also covered riots and rebellions
throughout Central and South America. He served as the NBC
News bureau chief in Havana and won an Overseas Press Club
award for his coverage of the Dominican Republic Civil War.
He also covered the Falkand Islands War and the American invasion
of Grenada. In 1979, Valeriani published "Travels With
Henry," an account of his time as a Washington correspondent
for NBC logging 500,000 miles with then-Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger. Today, Valeriani works as a free-lance journalist
and media consultant and broadcasts a weekly commentary on
NBC Radio Network. He is writing a book about the television
industry.
Francis
Ward
He has been a journalism professor in the Newhouse School,
Syracuse University, since 1990. He is a 20-year veteran journalist
with posts at The Black Scholar, Ebony and Jet magazines.
Ward also wrote a weekly column the black community for the
Miami Herald and reported on civil rights and urban affairs
for the Los Angeles Times. Ward worked at WHUT-TV in Washington,
D.C., and spent five years as an assistant press secretary
in the city of Chicago government. Ward holds a master’s
from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public
Communications. Ward has completed work on a book on Chicago
politics and Harold Washington as mayor (1983-87).
Ernest
C. Withers
He has had a wide-ranging career, having
served as a county constable, as an agent with the Tennessee
State Alcoholic Beverage Commission and as one of the first
black police officers in the City of Memphis. But it is as
a photojournalist that he has earned a legendary reputation.
In 1943, he entered the Army and convinced his commanding
officer to send him to the Army photo school. Upon leaving
the Army, he began making portraits, wedding photographs and
parties – then took photographic assignments from the
Tri-State Defender, the Chicago Defender and other black newspapers
across the nation. In the 1950s and 1960s, Withers covered
many civil rights events in the South, including the Emmett
Till murder case; the desegregation of Central High School
in Little Rock, Ark.; school integration in Memphis and Clinton,
Tenn.; the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott and the Mack Charles
Parker lynching. He was on the scene at the assassination
of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Withers also covered the killings
of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss. At the
funeral of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., he was beaten by
a police officer and arrested. In 1988, Withers was inducted
into the Black Press Hall of Fame.
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