In
the 1960's Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes were the first black American
students to attend and graduate from the University of Georgia. Their pioneering
role in integrating the university was seen on television around the world,
and the experience made them stronger individuals.
After graduation, Hunter-Gault
worked for The New Yorker Magazine. She soon won a Russell Sage Fellowship to
Washington University and later joined the staff of Trans-Action Magazine. In
1967, she became an anchor for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. and joined its investigative
news team.
From 1968 to 1978, Hunter-Gault
reported news about the black community for The New York Times. Her creative
and insightful reporting earned her the National Urban Coalition Award for Distinguished
Reporting. In 1 978, she joined the MacNeil/Lehrer News Report as a correspondent
and has won a number of awards for excellence in journalism.
In 1986, she was named "Journalist
of the Year" by the National Association of Black Journalists and her television
series on South Africa, "Apartheid's People," received the George Foster Peabody
Award for Excellence.
She has also received two
Emmy Awards for National News and Documentary, and in 1990, received the Sidney
Hillman Award for her six-part series entitled "Out of Reach: People at the
Bottom."
Although television reporting
and production consumes most of her time, Hunter-Gault continues to write for
publications such as The New York Times Magazine and its Book Review as well
as The Saturday Review, Essence Magazine and Vogue. Her memoir, In My Place,
was published in 1992.
