National Association of Black Journalists - News Release - NABJ to Induct Three Pioneers and 10 Legends to Hall of Fame

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 11, 2004

NABJ to Induct Three Pioneers and 10 Legends into Hall of Fame

WASHINGTON – John H. Johnson, Robert Maynard, Chuck Stone and 10 other legendary journalists dating back to the birth of the Black Press will be inducted into the NABJ Hall of Fame, NABJ President Herbert Lowe announced today.

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» Learn more about the NABJ Hall of Fame inductees

The NABJ Board of Directors voted to induct Johnson, publisher and chairman of Johnson Publishing Co.; Maynard, former owner and editor of The Oakland Tribune and co-founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism, and Stone, a retired newspaper editor and columnist and NABJ’s founding president, into the Hall of Fame at the board’s spring meeting, Lowe said.

The president said the board of directors also chose these legendary black journalists for induction:S

Robert S. Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender, which promoted the Great Migration.
Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm, co-publishers of Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first black newspaper.
Frederick Douglass, a former slave-turned-abolitionist who published the North Star.
W.E.B. DuBois, creator and first editor of The Crisis magazine.
T. Thomas Fortune, one of the most prominent journalists in the post-Civil War era.
Marcus Garvey, journalist for Africa Times and Orient Review, publisher of Negro World.
Ethel Payne, “First Lady of the Black Press,” correspondent for Sengstacke Newspapers.
John Sengstacke, founder of the Michigan Chronicle, publisher of the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, newspaper editor who crusaded against segregation and lynching.

The 13 pioneers and legends will formally be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Thursday, August 5, 2004, during NABJ’s annual convention banquet at the UNITY 2004: Journalists of Color Convention and Career Expo at the Washington Convention Center, Lowe said.

NABJ’s Hall of Fame was created in 1990. That year, the board of directors, led by then-President Thomas Morgan III, voted to induct these seven distinguished journalists as charter members:

Dorothy Butler Gilliam, a reporter, editor and columnist at The Washington Post.
Mal Goode, the first black network TV news correspondent.
Mal Johnson, a founding NABJ member and longtime Cox Broadcasting Co. correspondent.
Gordon Parks, renowned photojournalist at Life magazine, author and filmmaker.
Ted Poston, called the “dean of black journalists” during his New York Post career.
Norma Quarles, veteran network anchor/correspondent at NBC, CNN and PBS.
Carl T. Rowan, syndicated columnist once called nation’s “most visible black journalist.”

“Regrettably, no one else had been inducted into the Hall of Fame since 1990,” said Lowe, a criminal courts reporter at Newsday in New York. “Many NABJ members have wanted to see it become a staple of how we fulfill one of our 44 founders’ main goals: to honor excellence and outstanding achievement by black journalists. I’m thrilled that our current board of directors has decided to choose new inductees. I hope our association’s future leaders will do so each year.”

NABJ Region VII Director Russell LaCour, who represents members in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, said he sponsored the motion that led to the new inductions because he believes the Hall of Fame is an excellent way to honor titans of the Black Press.

“The importance of the Black Press cries out for recognition,” said LaCour, a copy editor at the Tulsa World. “Many of those who lived long before us sacrificed a lot – some even their lives – just to put the news out. The Hall of Fame is a way to honor them for telling our stories so well.”

The board of directors chose Johnson, Maynard and Stone from a list of nominees put forth by a screening committee created by Lowe. The screening committee included Gilliam (who served as NABJ’s president from 1993-1995) as chairwoman; Shannon Buggs, financial columnist, Houston Chronicle; Angela Davis, anchor, KSTP-TV, St. Paul/Minneapolis; Michael Days, managing editor, Philadelphia Daily News, and John L. Dotson Jr., publisher emeritus, Akron Beacon Journal.

Gilliam – now a fellow at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, where she is helping to train high school journalism advisers nationally – said:

“John Johnson was crucial in an era which too many people too easily forget, when this country had not yet decided that black people would have the same rights as other Americans. The magazines he started, in particular, Ebony and Jet, were lifeboats during the stings of institutional and personal racism. And their impact continues to this day.”
“Chuck Stone was a powerful voice during that same era. He was a man who always spoke truth to power and was never afraid to say the words that made the establishment squirm.”
“Bob Maynard’s impact through the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education was tremendous in helping thousands of journalists of color into mainstream media. He vowed to remove from the lexicon of American journalism, ‘We can’t find any qualified blacks,’ and he did just that.”

The committee strongly recommended that the board induct the 10 legendary figures, arguing that no legitimate Hall of Fame for black journalists could be without them and that this year’s revival of NABJ’s Hall of Fame was the appropriate time to do so, Lowe said.

“Today’s black journalists stand on the shoulders of these pioneers who gave voice to black Americans when this country said they were subhuman,” Gilliam said. “They gave voice through the abolitionist movement, to help rid the nation of the evil of slavery, and through the decades of segregation. NABJ salutes these legendary black journalists and acknowledges that their story, as largely shared through the Black Press, are the stories of all black Americans.”

An advocacy group established in 1975 in Washington, D.C., NABJ is the largest organization of journalists of color in the world, with 3,600 members, and provides educational, career development and support to black journalists worldwide.